


All in the Past Now

by Cards_Slash



Series: Sass Verse [10]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-09 00:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 44,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11657721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Sef went looking for why his Grandpa died so young when he found the truth, it wasn't anything he could have predicted.  Rather than explain what he found (and destroy his family) he runs away.  He gets brought back when his Grandmother gets sick and finds that all decisions have consequences.





	1. Chapter 1

It was one of those truths that _everyone_ knew and _nobody_ really bothered to talk about. Grandma and Grandpa Ibn-La’Ahad died young and Dad was raised by his Grandma. Once or twice, in January when they all went through the tedium of another family reunion, there was talk of how Grandma Maud had died of a congenital heart defect. Maybe, they bothered to mention Grandpa Umar and how he had died of something-or-another and it was genetic.

Sef had been fifteen or almost, leaning into Father’s shoulder saying, “what did Grandpa Umar die of?” because nobody had ever-actually- _said_. Father shrugged and whispered back, “I don’t know. I don’t think he knows,” with a motion toward Dad.

It was just Sef that cared. Jaida had rolled her eyes at him when he was sixteen with medical textbooks loaded on his tablet as he followed her around the mansion, citing possibilities he picked out of long lists. “Nobody cares,” Jaida shouted at him in the servant hallways. Both of her hands were raised up around her face.

“Well, you can say that because they’re not your biological relatives,” Sef snapped back. “The rest of us don’t have that luxury. For all we know, we’ve got ticking time bombs in our blood. These are real problems that we can pass onto our children and you act like—”

Jaida rolled her eyes at him, “aren’t you gay?” like that meant he would never have a child. He could have cited every moment of their lives as proof that sexual orientation did not necessarily preclude having biological children and she still would have walked away from him.

Darim took up high school sports with intolerable vigor and so he had no time at all to care about whatever Sef was saying to him when they were both on the bench in the locker room. Sef was tying his shoes and citing studies that might provide some clue to how Grandpa Umar had died, “And that would make him more susceptible to infections and—”

“Sef!” Darim shouted at him with his jersey breezing around his chest and both his hands palms-out to stop the endless flood of words. “The only thing this is going to do is upset Dad, okay? Nobody else sits around and thinks about this. Nobody else _cares_.”

Tazim fell asleep nodding along to Sef trying to dissect what little he did know.

Then there was Dad, who always looked at him with half-squinted eyes when Sef tried to figure out how to ask him what he remembered. Sef asked, “what was Grandpa Umar like?” when he wanted to know what symptoms he displayed in the end. He’d spent hours looking through Mrs. Finch’s albums, trying to figure out signs of potential disease from grainy old photos.

Dad said, “he was quiet.” But he also looked at Sef like looking through him, when he said, “why?”

Sef shrugged like it was no big deal. “I’m just curious.”

\--

Later, when he was older and more educated (but not yet a doctor, not yet as smart as he needed to be) he was digging through Phyllis’ dusty old filing cabinets, snugly situated in a room by her office in the mansion. Legend (as told by the cousins) had it that everything Phyllis ever did was kept in those cabinets. Tazim was there with his lock pick set, helping him by breaking into the old locks. When he couldn’t manage it, they employed the somewhat brutish method of smashing them with a hammer. It took him almost two straight weeks of digging through dust as thick as textbooks before he found Umar’s medical file.

Sef was all alone, in the old mansion kitchen, sitting at the table with sandwich crumbs scattered everywhere, reading the file from front to back. He was twenty-four and eleven months, a young man (one might say), when he finally figured out what killed his Grandfather. It was a doctor’s chaotic script, and the words: **Patient refuses further care for religious reasons.** There was more, some fine script nonsense about how this information was provided via a translator and in the presence of Phyllis who had authority given to her by money.

There was no further intervention. There was no follow-up. There was no autopsy. The doctor had been sent away on false pretenses and the file had been carefully stored.

\--

Darim was the first to say it, not so long after the crime, “dude, why the hell did you break into Phyllis’ old office?” It was over a beer or something very like it, while Sef was doing a hell of a job not looking at his brother’s face. (Thinking, that out of four kids and three separate parents the only one they knew for sure had Altair’s genetics was his clone-son sitting opposite Sef right-that-moment.) “Dad was pissed.”

Sef rolled his eyes, “Dad doesn’t get pissed.”

“Well,” Darim conceded, “he wasn’t happy about it. Nobody’s been in those files since Grandma Phyllis died. I heard him saying something about it being like desecrating a grave.”  
When they were stupid kids, Darim was the biggest and the bravest. He had always been three-seconds older than Sef and a minute and a half older than Tazim. Sef had never been too bothered by the pretense of bravery when he could just as well outsmart his enemies. When he finally looked at his brother, he saw his Dad’s face, and he said, “I was just looking for some idea of how Grandpa Umar died,” because it was _true_ and because Darim wouldn’t _care_.

“You need to leave that alone,” Darim said (without a moment to wonder why it mattered), “do you understand? The _only_ thing that you’re going to do with that shit is upset Dad.”

It wasn’t the first lie that Sef ever told his brother, but it was the first one he told him _lately_ when he said, “well I didn’t find anything.”

“You need to apologize to Dad,” Darim said.

“Yeah,” Sef agreed. He tipped his beer up and drank until it was empty and Darim was moving on to a whole new conversation in half-a-minute, all about his girlfriend and his knee injury. It was easy to let Darim talk, and to look at the bar napkin, and to think about how different everything would have been if only he’d found nothing.

\--

“If you’re going to be in town this weekend,” Father said to him over the phone, “you could stay at the house.” Malik was never too pushy about things; never to overtly demanding. Instead he made things simple for you to agree with his requests. It would be simple as anything to go home to his old bedroom, to let his parents make him food three times a day and sleep until noon and forget about everything but the inescapable safety of home.

“Is Dad there right now?” Sef asked instead of turning it down.

“Yes,” Father said. There was a question lingering at the end of it he never quite got around to asking. 

“Maybe we can do lunch if I’ve got the time,” Sef said. He had nothing-at-all but _time_. “I’ve already made plans to stay with a friend,” he hadn’t. 

Malik’s answer was a hum of disbelief. Sef was nothing but a liar, daydreaming about many things and none of them good things. Still, Father said, “you should come by if you have the time. It’s been a while since we saw you.”

“Yeah,” was Sef talking to his desk and not his Father. “I’ve just been busy, you know. Studying and all that. Might have been nice to get some of Dad’s genius in the genetic soup.” The words felt frantic as he summed them up, “I had money on Tazim showing up with it but I don’t even think he’s Dad’s kid. Anyway I should go, it was nice talking to you--bye.” He hung up the phone before Malik had a chance to wedge a word in.

\--

Sef was twenty five, and an old man, at the next family reunion. He’d cycled through excuses and found none that were decent enough to excuse him. It wasn’t hard to avoid his Dad at family reunions. Every one of the old cousins showed up with as many of their offspring as they could wrangle. Half the cousins were grandparents, half the family reunion was awwing over toddlers and infants.

Sef caught Edward (the only cousin that Dad seemed to deem worthwhile and trustworthy) outside by the rose garden. He was an old man too, with gray in his blonde hair and a face like rough leather. But he sat in absolute stillness and he enjoyed the snow and the sun and the skeleton branches of the old rose bushes. Sef sat next to him without being invited and he said, “what was Grandma Phyllis like?”

Edward’s eyes were bright and sharp, sliding sideways as his mouth crooked up with an almost smile. “That’s a question I haven’t been asked in a very long time.” He straightened up a bit from slouching. The only thing about Edward that Sef had ever admired was how uninterested he was in motives. There was no member of Malik’s immediate family (and therefore no member of Sef’s immediate family) that wasn’t preoccupied with motives and unspoken things. If he’d sat next to his Father and asked him if he liked peaches, Malik would have spent sixty minutes plucking apart his intentions. But Edward was an old man and an outsider, he was as uncomplicated as any single man could be, he said: “what do you want to know, _specifically_?”

(I want to know if she murdered my Grandfather. I want to know if she was capable of it. I want to know if everything my Dad believes is a lie.) Sef shrugged, “nobody really talks about her. I mean, even Dad. He just gets sad on his birthday and sits outside at her grave.”

“Phyllis was complicated.”

That was no answer about whether or not she’d let a man die on purpose just to take his son. Sef stared at Edward and Edward stared back. Maybe Sef was working up to a more direct question, and maybe he wasn’t.

Edward sighed, “Phyllis loved your Father,” like there was any doubt of that, “she would never have done anything to harm him. Anything else you suspect she might have done, she probably did.”

“Okay,” Sef said.

\--

Tazim called him on their birthday, not so long after one in the afternoon. All behind his voice was the sound of intolerable noise. It was the sound made by innumerous family members all trying to be quiet and barely managing to keep their combined voices down to a dull roar. It was the sound of one of his Dad’s great ideas.

Sef was trying to remember what their birthday party was supposed to be this year. His head was pounding with a hard hangover out of time with his back reminding him how falling asleep drunk-and-studying was just plain stupid. He said, “I’m just busy.”

“It’s our _birthday_ ,” Tazim shouted at him. His voice was pulled away from the phone. “He said he’s not coming!”

“What?” was Darim on the other end. “It’s our birthday! I just talked to him last week, he said he was going to show up!” There was a scuffle for the phone that was interrupted by the sound of his sister, of Jaida (the great and powerful) cutting in saying,

“Is that Sef? Give me the phone.” It didn’t matter how old or how big the boys had gotten, not a single one of them had the fortitude to challenge Jaida fucking Al-Sayf, the leader of the Children of the Two Fathers (so they called themselves, when they were still too young to make sense of their own last names). Then it was Jaida’s voice, “what are you doing?”

“I’m not coming,” he answered.

“Why?” Jaida demanded.

Sef just hung up on her. There was no arguing with Jaida; there was no single person in the family that had ever bested her. Not even Dad, who argued for the fun of it, not even Father who argued for the sake of it. As soon as he’d hung up on her, the phone was ringing and Sef held it in his hand and stared at it.

There was no thinking, but the quiet sensation of fear that overcame him, when he slid his thumb across the decline and the phone went silent. Maybe later he’d listen to the voicemail of his sister hissing curses at him and maybe he wouldn’t.

\--

Sef was twenty-six and alone at Christmas, drinking vodka out of the bottle while he read the only biography of Phyllis fucking DeCort ever written. He’d spent six months hunting down a copy of it, spending too much time and too much money in the process. Every word was as crisp as new money, every single line leaden and false. 

There was no victory in the story of his Grandmother; there was only the history of a girl who had been born rich, the brief story of a woman who had been galvanized by her infertility and who had faced the cruel world fearlessly. 

(No mention, of course, of the woman who had lied to the doctors and sat quietly in her office, at her massive desk, while Altair’s father died under her watchful eye.)

\--

Desmond left him a message after Christmas that said, “we missed you at Christmas, Sef.” It lingered awkwardly a half-breath before he added, “I’m sure you’re just busy at school, but if there was ever anything you needed to talk about. No matter what it was. We would be here for you.”

Sef drank himself through the week between Christmas and New Years and woke up in his bathtub. He was twenty-fucking-six years old.

\--

“Give me one good fucking reason you aren’t going to be here,” Jaida hissed at him over the phone. She was calling to make sure he understood that he had to attend the family reunion since he missed Christmas, and birthdays, and New Years, and _everything_. (Did he know that Tazim was engaged? He did not know that. Because Tazim could take a hint, unlike his sister.) 

“I’m moving to England,” he said. “I have to pack.”

“ _Why_?” Jaida shouted at him.

“Because I don’t want to be here anymore,” was as good a reason as any. “Look, just tell everyone that I love them. I’ll see them at the next one.”

Jaida’s response wasn’t immediate. Instead, she said (oh-so-quietly), “Sef, what the fuck?”   
Every single part of his aching body wanted to tell her. The same he’d told her about every bad thing that had ever happened. Jaida had never (ever) failed him, and he wanted to tell her everything he’d figured out about how Umar had been allowed to die, and how long it must have taken and how much it must have hurt him. He wanted to tell her he’d worked it out from the medical files, how he’d developed an infection and how it had spread and how it could have been cured with antibiotics and time--

“I just want to be on my own for a while,” is what he said instead. “I’ve got to go.”

\--

Sef made a life across the ocean; where the odds of running into his Dad were slim to none. He took in the sights. He found a job, and a university willing to educate him. He got a place to live, and enough alcohol to let him sleep.

He didn’t think too hard about what he’d left behind; or why, or how far he could push before there was no going back.

\--

Sef turned twenty-seven all alone. There wasn’t even a phone call to congratulate him on his continued efforts of breathing. He went out with a few people he called friends (folks who hardly knew him) and he got drunk and he had sex in the bathroom of a bar (or pub or club or whatever one called them). He woke up in a confused stupor, face down in luxurious blankets. 

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself, alone in a hotel room he didn’t recognize. His phone and wallet were on the bedside table. His shoes and socks were sitting over by the door. There was no sign that any other person had ever been in the room with him (at least not an amorous someone). It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in a hotel room he didn’t recognize but it was far too nice of a room to be anywhere he might have stumbled to while drunk. 

The whole thing reeked of parental involvement, the kind of non-judgmental thing that his Dad was well-known for. Sef shoved his phone and wallet into his pockets and put his shoes on. When he stepped out into the hallway, he expected to find his Dad waiting for him and found nothing instead. 

Down at the front desk, he checked himself out (without any idea how he’d gotten there) and was halfway to leaving without a second thought when he went back to the desk and asked to leave a message for his Dad. The woman assured him there was nobody by the name in the hotel.

“I know, I’m his son, I know okay. You can’t tell me he’s here. I know. Just, write it down from Sef. S-e-f, tell him thank you.”

\--

Mother found him not too long after. She hadn’t been much of an event in his life, more like a footnote and an extra birthday gift once a year. She had bowed out of all the mundane tasks of child-rearing and rarely entertained the notion of appearing maternal. When they had visited her it was always somewhere on location where they could watch movie-making magic and never anywhere she would have to be too bothered. It wasn’t that she was a bad Mother; simply that she had never been a Mother at all. Her title was honorary and they all preferred it that way. Still, she showed up at his door like an Ambassador. “Your Father is worried,” she said.

Sef was nursing a headache, thinking delightfully about the possibility of joining up with whatever doctor circuit took him somewhere beyond cell service (basically nowhere, these days), and nowhere at all near ready for Maria to sit at his table and look at the mess of his home (a flat, as they were called here) with a twitch of worry in her face. “Which one?” he asked.

“Both, most likely,” Maria said. “Malik asked me to check on you. You haven’t been returning your phone calls.”

“Well, Father worries too much, he always has.” Or perhaps not enough. Not nearly enough what with how Sef had become a full-fledged alcoholic; how he’d made wreckage of his life over one stupid secret. Perhaps, Father hadn’t worried enough, perhaps he hadn’t hovered close enough or lectured hard enough or cautioned strongly enough. 

Maria sighed, hands flat to the table. She kept her silence for a minute and then she breathed out through her nose, “Altair thinks he’s done something to upset you. He doesn’t know what it was but he said that it must have been significant so he doesn’t want to push you until you're ready. You’re not a child, Sef. Whatever was done, it can be resolved.”

“Fuck you,” he said. He’d never even considered the possibility of speaking that way to any parent but it tumbled straight out of his mouth. Maria (Mother) looked like she’d been slapped across the face and her pale skin went perfectly pink. “Some things can’t be resolved. I don’t owe anyone anything, I’m just trying to live my life.”

“Fine,” Mother said.

\--

Sef busied himself with bars and cheap dates. He found men that didn’t care for conversation and he distracted himself every minute of the day from _ideas_ that grew like vines out of his brain. He didn’t think about how his Grandfather had been murdered; he didn’t think about how he could never tell his Dad.

He didn’t think about his brothers, who had given up even the pretense of calling.

He didn’t think about Jaida who sent him invitations to spite him; and photos of his family (just to hurt him). 

\--

When he was twenty eight and six weeks, his Dad showed up in his flat. Either Sef had not locked his door the night before (and might not have) or Dad was exemplary at breaking and entering. Either or both could have been true, but very suddenly he came out of the bathroom and found his Dad sitting at the little table by his kitchen looking perfectly composed.  
And old. It had only been a few years, not nearly long enough for anyone to age so rapidly, but Altair had gotten old. It wasn’t any one thing: not his hair, not the lines on his face, not the looseness of his skin—but the whole sum of him that seemed to have suddenly shifted from the ageless father he’d known his whole life to this man. “Hello son,” Altair said. He motioned at the other chair. There were two coffees sitting on the table.

Sef didn’t speak but drag his feet until he had no choice but to sit. When he did, he was working up enough venom to send his Dad away but he was cut off.

Dad said, “Lamah’s very sick. You have to come home.” The thing about his Dad that his Father imitated but couldn’t perfect, was that his word was absolute law. There was a quality to his speech, to his face and body, that offered no room to bargain or disobey. Dad commanded; everyone obeyed. (Except Father, who seemed oblivious.) “I’d prefer if you set aside whatever’s been troubling you for the duration.”

“How long?” Sef asked.

“It’s been coming on slowly. This is a sudden illness. The doctors are hopeful she will pull through but she is an older woman.” Dad reached into his pocket and plucked out a plane ticket. They were a rarity in the world these days, but he slid the paper slips across the table to him. “It’s for the afternoon. You should pack.” Then he stood up and saw himself out.

\--

Sef got in late-late-late at night and he went directly to the hospital. He used his name and his Dad’s power to muscle his way in through the doors when the hospital cited visiting hours at him. All through the hospital the nurses were shushed and working, charting their findings on computer screens and chatting about their lives away from work.

Grandma Lamah was sleeping when he found her room. Uncle Kadar was attempting to sleep in a reclining chair, all his limbs were hanging over the sides as he snored. Sef fixed the blanket when he slid around the bed to look at the monitor that listed all of his Grandmother’s vitals. He sat in the spare chair and watched her sleep with his fingers brushing across the back of her hands, thinking about how he used to love her house on Sundays when they visited. Everything smelled right, as if he’d finally found home.

She didn’t wake up while he watched her but Kadar knocked his elbow against the wall and woke up surly and growling. He was no young man either, his back wasn’t made for the hellish hospital recliners. He was working through announcing all that to himself when he noticed Sef. “Shit,” he whispered and immediately looked at his Mother like she would wake up to scold him. “When did you get here?”

“About an hour ago,” Sef whispered.

Kadar forced the recliner back into upright position and stood up. It was the two of them, looking at Lamah while she slept and listening to the beeps and buzzes of the equipment working to save her life. After a pause, Kadar said: “there’s a vending machine down the hall. Let’s get a drink.”

They shuffled to the vending machines (a floor down from the one they were on) and Kadar leaned against a wall while he drank a coke and regarded Sef like he was a stranger. They had never been friends or not friends exactly. They had, up to this moment, been indifferent to each other.

“How’s Father?” Sef asked.

“Father is Malik?” Kadar asked and Sef nodded. Then he shrugged, “unequipped to deal with tragedy. He’s never been very good at coping with things.” Then Kadar took another drink and went back to regarding him. “How long has it been?”

Sef shrugged, “Since I went to England? A year, maybe two.”

Kadar was marinating on that idea; just letting it sit out there in the open while he reviewed everything he knew about Sef. “You doing well?”

“I guess,” he said.

They were tip-toeing around something. Conversations with Kadar were often made of ballet moves, delicate but purposeful steps and leaps and twists and pretty turns and it didn’t matter how carefully Sef (or any of them) had ever spoken, they always gave themselves up in the end. When he was a child, there had always been the surety that Kadar had been retrieved to gently uncover a confession of some trauma or another. Whatever it was, Kadar had always seemed to know before they started, but here. _Here_ , right now, in this hospital hallway, it seemed his uncle had no idea what he was looking for. 

“How’s Claudia?” Sef asked.

“She’s fine,” Kadar said. Then he said, flat out as blunt as ever, “what made you leave?”

“I went to school in Engl--”

“Kid,” Kadar cut in, “my Mother is dying. Okay? Right _now_. Maybe she’ll make it through this one, but it won’t change anything. She’s _dying_ ,” there was something like a smile tugging at Kadar’s lips. He’d seen that look before, when people were trying not to cry; he’d heard this voice before (in hospital hallways) when people were trying to put affairs in order. “And, I can’t get my stupid brother anywhere near that. I can’t tell if he knows and he doesn’t want to or if he thinks if he ignores it long enough it’ll fix itself--and it doesn’t matter because it’s been one maybe two years of nonstop bullshit with him. I appreciate that whatever you went through with your Dad was bad, so if you don’t want to talk about it we won’t talk about it. But _kid_ I’m up to my ears in idiots trying to act like nothing ever happened.”

“What?” Sef asked. “What I went through with Dad? What?” Those words were all in the right order without meaning. He said, “You mean yesterday? He just told me to come home.”

Kadar just stared at him. “What?” was every bit as confused as Sef was.

“What, what?” Sef said. 

For a moment, (if that long), there was his Father’s impatience making an appearance on Kadar’s face. They didn’t often look much like one another, or act like one another, but just there. Kadar closed his eyes and opened them again, like he was resetting the world to make sense. “Did Altair hurt you?” Kadar asked. 

“No, he gave me a plane ticket.”

Kadar rubbed his face with his hand, and mumbled something low into his palm before he dropped it away again. “Kid,” he said again, “did you leave and move to England because Altair did something to you? Did he say something to you? Hit you? Make you feel afraid or unwanted in any way?”

Every part of Sef filled up with cold dread, heavy-and-grating all along his joints. He swallowed past the rise of bile in his throat as he shook his head, “no,” didn’t seem nearly as confident as it needed to be. 

“Nobody would be angry at you if he had; it wouldn’t be your fault.”

“Dad _never_ did anything to hurt me,” Sef said.

Kadar laughed then and it was ugly. “Nothing?” he repeated. And he shook his head as he looked down the hall. “Fuck.” He stared at the ceiling for a pause. His throat swallowed once-then-twice before he looked at Sef again. “Everyone thinks he did,” Kadar said. There was some attempt at civility in the statement. “ _Everyone_ ,” offered no forgiveness to anyone involved. 

“Why would they?” Sef watched the disbelief and disgust work through Kadar’s whole body, and it sank to his feet where he shifted back and forth and back and forth. “What happened?”

Kadar looked very, terribly old then. “I need to get back; you need to tell your Father or Dad, whichever one is Malik. And, I don’t know, apologize to Altair. Fuck,” he repeated. 

\--

There were no unbiased reporters in his family. Every person (he’d learned) viewed the world through a different lens and none of them were capable of fairness. Sef went to Uncle Desmond because in all his life, the only person that cared about Dad more than Father was Desmond. If there was anyone that could give him some idea of what had happened (as close to the truth as possible) it was Uncle Desmond. He found him at home, the very same one he’d been living in since they were children. He found him out front with a rake and a leaf bag squinting angrily at a few scattered leaves that had escaped the pile.

“Hey,” Sef said. He was a grown-fucking man (and a doctor), but he felt like a child standing with his hands in his jacket pockets waiting to be reprimanded.

Desmond jerked around to look at him. His confusion mutated into happy shock as he dropped the rake and stepped forward, “Sef!” He pulled him into a hug that Sef simply didn’t deserve and held him there like he was trying to squeeze some terrible trauma out of him. For a minute, while he had the time to enjoy it, Sef just wrapped his arms around Desmond and closed his eyes.

If there were anyone, in all the world, he might have told—it would have been Desmond. They could have kept the secret between them. They could have shared that burden. (And it would have broken them both, eventually.) “Desmond,” Sef said into his shoulder, so he didn’t have to look the man in the eyes, “I didn’t leave because Dad did something to me.”

There was a stutter to the hug, Desmond stepped back and looked at him. They were strangers now. “You didn’t even call him on his birthday.”

Sef sighed. “I know.” But more importantly, “Kadar said that everyone thinks Dad did something. That’s not why I left.”

Desmond wasn’t listening to him, because he was rubbing his face with his fingers, thinking through the time Sef hadn’t been there. It was playing across his face and it ended with Desmond shaking his head, like he couldn’t make sense of it, saying something like, “Sef, _everyone_ thought he’d hurt you.”

“Did you?” Sef asked.

“Yes,” Desmond said. So plainly, as if it were the only _obvious_ solution.

Sef didn’t cry because it wasn’t the right place for it. “Why didn’t you just ask me? I would have told you he didn’t.”

“We tried,” Desmond said. “You never called back, or wrote, or showed up. I mean, you were fine, you were going to college and then Altair got upset about whoever broke into Phyllis’ office and Darim said it had to have been you? Then you were gone, even before you left, you weren’t here anymore. Of course we thought Altair did something.”

“Why?” Sef whispered. “Why would you think that? He’s never—”

Desmond was sighing. “Nothing?” he repeated.

“Nothing,” Sef assured him. He excused himself without offering excuses and Desmond didn’t seem very concerned with asking him to stay anyway.

\--

Jaida found him at his hotel and she greeted him with fists. She punched his arms and his chest the way she always had when they were kids, play-acting like real tough shits. Only time and effort had perfected her aim and her ability. He tried to catch her fists and she shouted at him:

“Do you know what they’ve said about him! Do you know what they’ve done! Do you know what _you’ve_ done you fuck!” She spit on him when she shouted, her voice turned shrill as she screamed. When she exhausted herself, she stood there with his hands in loops around her wrists, panting and staring at him. “He never did anything to you!” she shouted. “He didn’t _hit_ you, he didn’t _shout_ , he never _did anything_ to you!”

“I know!” Sef shouted back.

Jaida wrenched her hands loose and she shook her head and paced the space in front of him. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “Why? Huh? Because you didn’t give a shit for the past three years. You don’t deserve to be here now.”

“Dad asked me to come,” Sef whispered.

Jaida attacked him again and he did his best to dodge the blows, to hold her off without hitting her back. She pulled away again when he caught her elbow and rubbed her sore knuckles against her jacket.

“What did they do?”

“They think he attacked you, _Sef_. This family with its history of violence and bullying and psychopaths, they think that he got angry about you fucking up Phyllis’ office and he attacked you about it. Well, he didn’t, did he?”

Sef dropped into a chair and covered his whole face with his hands. He wasn’t looking so he didn’t watch Jaida finally see the little liquor bottles but he heard the sound she made when she saw them. He heard her hands grab them off the table and she threw them at him. “Jaida,” he said when she was almost out of ammunition and heading for the door.

“Fuck you,” she said. “Desmond wouldn’t talk to him for _months_ you fucking alcoholic. Father _moved out_ and acted like he was only trying to take care of Grandma. Lucy won’t let him near the grandbaby. I hope whatever the fuck you think you were doing was worth it.”

Sef didn’t want to cry and Jaida could see it. She was good at that, turning the screws until she got what she wanted. She wanted to break him and she wouldn’t quit until she got it. He said, “Why would they think he would do that?”

Jaida laughed, short and curt and full of disbelief. “Because our Dad is fucking psychopath, Sef.”

Well anyone would be, when their Grandmother killed their Father. Sef sniffled rather than cry and cleared his throat. “You should go,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Jaida said again, “you should fucking _go_.” Then just before she turned to leave, she doubled back, “and what the fuck were you doing telling Mom that some things couldn’t be resolved? What happened?” For a second, if only that long, there was genuine concern in Jaida’s face but Sef’s silence bled it away to impatience again. She shook her head as she left and the hotel door didn’t slam but slip quietly back into place. 

\--

Alcohol was good about putting him to sleep; but it was a real son of a bitch in the morning. Sef woke up on the floor (not the bed) and stood in his hotel shower until the hot water had scalded his skin. When he couldn’t take it another minute, he turned it to cold and waited to start shivering.

Despite the obviously public knowledge that he’d returned, there were no messages on his phone. No calls or texts of any sort. 

Sef got dressed in the suit he’d brought with him, and put on his fancy-doctor’s shoes before he slid his phone and his wallet into his pockets. He stood in front of the hotel mirror and tried to do something about how his hair never seemed to quiet lay flat and gave up. It was a long ride to his Father’s office, but a far too short walk to the front desk from the sidewalk. There was a small army of security officers that protected the lobby and a check in desk that required all visitors to register and get a pass. Sef had an employee pass from every summer of his childhood spent running from the top to bottom of this building; but he stood in line with the others and when he got to the front of the line he said,

“Sef Ibn-La’Ahad,” and slid his ID under the glass plate. The woman on the other side looked up from the mundane task of scanning to squint at his face. If she recognized the name (and she should), she obviously didn’t want to ask the obvious. Instead she slid him back a pass without so much as a cursory ‘have a great day’ and he nodded his thanks.

The elevators played inoffensive music and ran a loop of the company policy. The various hopeful, young faces of the company employees promised him they stood for something solid, and something true. It assured them they were committed to make a positive difference in the world.

Sef got out on Altair’s floor and walked up to the unsmiling receptionist. “Do you have an appointment?” the man asked him.

“No,” Sef said. “I’m his son. I was just hoping to catch him between meetings.”

“Have a seat,” the man said (with no noticeable change to his voice), “I’ll see if he’s available.”

\--

His Dad’s office was a magnificently staged affair. Someone might have mistaken him for a real career man if they’d never met him outside of it. Sef had grown up with Altair as _Dad_ , the silly and fun one. Altair had been the one that built them secret tunnels in the wall that ran like slides down to the basement. He’d thrown them birthday parties bigger than life itself. He had been the one that sat on the old tarp in the backroom and let Jaida paint his face like a clown because she wanted to play beauty parlor. He’d taught them all how to parkour and ride motorbikes. He’d woken them up late at night to watch movies in the living room with junk to eat and made sure they were all covered up with blankets when they fell asleep on the floor.   
Every memory of stolen fun had been a memory of Altair. It wasn’t that Malik didn’t believe in fun; but that Malik had always believed in organized fun. 

Beautiful chaos was Altair’s prefered form of fun. 

But there was no room for that in his Dad’s office. Everything was streamlined, and pressed. This was the office of a man who aggressively took everything he wanted; the office of a man who cared about nothing in the whole world. There wasn’t even the vaguest element of color, or _fun_ in the whole bleak room. And that was where Sef found him, after all the lost years, looking up at him from behind his massive desk. “Please sit,” his Dad said like they were strangers.

Sef did not want to, but he did. “I never told anyone you hurt me. I never said anything like it.” It was a piss poor reintroduction but it seemed more important than anything else.

Altair leaned back in his chair and let his hands fall off the table to rest in his lap. He didn’t sigh but he looked as if he wanted to. “I did not assume that you had,” he said very carefully.

The silence dragged and _dragged_. Sef had spent _years_ avoiding this situation, avoiding look at his Dad any longer than he had to. Sitting opposite him in a closed room, all he could see was all the places his Dad had aged. All he could imagine was a thousand worse things he’d done when he set out to protect (himself) Altair. “Why would they even think you would?” Sef asked.

“When I was a young man, I was very well known for my temper.” There was more and Altair didn’t seem like he had any intention to share them. Instead, he shifted so he was leaning forward. His arms were pressed against the edge of his desk as he looked at Sef. It was the stare that he’d used when he intended to have the ugly truth and to be done with something. It was the precise look that Sef had been hiding from for years. “I want you to tell me what you found in Phyllis’ office.”

Sef’s voice was broken glass, saying, “I _can’t_.” The secret was too ugly, it was too tangled up in his guts. He’d mapped it out, put the time-and-dates all together in order alongside the medical records. He knew the exact moment that Phyllis had simply decided keeping the man alive was more trouble than it was worth. He knew exactly the day she decided to let him die. (Not so many days, it turned out, after Altair’s birthday that year.) And he’d stood in the hospital rooms of men-and-women dying of sepsis; he’d seen their families in the hallway crying. 

“Please,” Altair said. 

It had been years of trying to forget (and not being able to, not being able to stop worrying at it) but it all broke down to four simple words and they were: “Phyllis let Umar die.”

There was nothing. Altair did not even so much as flinch; he didn’t gasp. He didn’t breathe, he didn’t look away. He sat perfectly still, and after a small eternity, he nodded his head. “Thank you.”

“That’s it?” Sef demanded. “Doesn’t it matter? She _killed_ him. He was being treated and she just made it _stop_.”

It was _cruel_ , but Altair ran his tongue across his lips and said (quietly), “it matters. I wish you had told me sooner.”

He was coming apart at all the joints, his body unscrewing itself under the pressure. “I didn’t realize you wouldn’t care!” Sef shouted. He was standing before the thought occurred to him. “She _murdered_ your Father!”

“I understand,” Altair said.

“That woman was a monster!”

Altair did close his eyes then.

Sef was rattling in place, unable to stop, “do you realize what happens when you die like he did? It took _months_ for him to die. The infection had to spread to his bloodstream and who knows how many fucking organs it infected along the way--he could have been in _agony_ all the while that _monster_ was tucking you in bed at night and kissing your forehead and telling you stories about how you were born a fish!”

“Yes!” Altair shouted back. He was standing in an instant. There was a shake in his arms that ran down to where his fingers were pressed to the desk. For an instant, if that long, you could see the man Desmond-and-Kadar-and-Malik had been afraid would hurt him. There was raw, animal anger and hurt on Altair’s face. But he took in a breath and let it out again. “I understand the mechanics of the situation.” He straightened and ran his hand down his shirt front and tucked his tie into exactly the same place it had been. “At present, I’m more concerned with your Father.”

“So it doesn’t matter?” Sef asked.

“If given the choice between choosing which to worry about, I would always choose Malik. I cannot change what Phyllis did, I can’t bring my Father back to life, but there’s a small chance that I might be able to convince my Husband that _I’m_ not a monster.” 

“Father wouldn’t think--”

“You’d be amazed at the conclusions your Father jumps to,” Altair cut in. “You were the quietest of his children, Sef. You were the one that he worried about the most. All your life, he was worried that something would happen to you and he wouldn’t be able to protect you and then it did. The only thing that anyone knows for sure is that I was angry, and you never came home.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Sef whispered. It was meek, weak and stupid in the face of what he’d been shouting. 

Altair did sigh then, “I wish you had told me.” He sat back down after a pause and motioned for Sef to sit as well. 

He did not sit, “did Father really move out?”

“Yes,” Altair said.

Sef couldn’t swallow the guilt that crept up his throat. “I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen, I thought--I thought telling you would be the worst thing, I thought I was protecting you.”

Altair looked at him, “as it turns out, watching my son become an alcoholic and having the rest of my family finally reveal they have always believed I was the same as my Grandmother is worse. I did not know about my Father but it does not surprise me; knowing what I know about my Grandmother now, what I’ve learned since I took over her businesses, there is nothing you can tell me that might surprise me.” He cleared his throat, “unless you found some proof that she was capable of love.”

There was really nothing to say to that. Sef didn’t sit so much as collapse. He leaned back into the chair and rubbed his face with his hand. His fingertips slid across the salt track of his tears and damp spots of snot above his lip. “I need a drink,” he mumbled.

Altair snorted at that. He leaned sideways and retrieved two glasses and a bottle from his desk. He filled a glass half full and slid it across to him. “Don’t consider this my approval.” He sipped his own glass while Sef tried to make his last. They sat in miserable contemplation of things. “You remember Leonardo?”

“Yes,” because of course he did. 

“I almost killed him.” Altair’s face was unsmiling even with his lips curled up at the edges. “When I was twenty one? Twenty two? I almost beat him to death. If he hadn’t shoved me off, I probably would have.” He took a drink to that.

“You’re not a monster,” Sef said. And nothing hurt more than the way his Dad looked at him with forgiving pity; as if Sef were still too young to understand. 

\--

Sef took a cab back to the hospital when all he wanted was to go back to his hotel room and hide. The staff would have restocked the minibar by the time he got there and he could have happily drank himself to oblivion and forgotten the whole disgusting mess of the day. Still, he found himself getting a visitor’s past to his Grandma’s hospital room.

He had expected that his Father would be there with her and was surprised to find her sitting up in bed alone. The recliner that Kadar had done a terrible job sleeping in the night before was standing empty with a fresh assortment of linen stacked in it. The TV opposite the bed was murmuring news over the quiet beeps of the equipment. Lamah looked up at him, and her whole face was cracked open by her smile. “Sef,” she said (and he didn’t deserve that, the way she said his name, the way she held her arms out toward him). 

He hugged her and she squeezed him as hard as she could manage. He sat in the chair next to her, “hi Grandma,” he said.

“Where have you been?” she asked him. His Grandmother had a quality all her own, a sincerity that had not been passed on to either of her sons. Her hands covered his and she looked at him with no weight, no condemnation, no hidden disapproval.

“Stupid,” he said.

Grandma smiled at him and leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “That’s just your Father coming out in you,” she whispered. Her fingers ruffled through his hair. “It’s good that you’ve come back. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he said. “What happened?”

“I got a cold. It turned into pneumonia and your Father insisted that I come to the hospital about it. It’s a great deal of fussing.” Her hands rested on the back of his again and she watched his face. There was more to the story than she was saying, probably some underlying issue that had concerned the doctors enough to have her admitted. He didn’t press her about it.

“Did you ever think Dad would hurt one of us?” Sef asked. “Did Father?”

Grandma drew in a breath and patted his hand. When she let it out again, she said (very carefully), “I do not personally believe Altair is capable of hurting his children.”

“Did Father leave him because of me?” Sef whispered.

“No,” Grandma said. It wasn’t much of a lie, just a creative viewing of the truth. “Malik left because he doubted and he didn’t want to, and he couldn’t handle the guilt. My son has never been very good at coping with doubt; his imagination always leads him to dark places.” She ran her thumb across Sef’s knuckles. “Like you.”

“Dad didn’t hurt me,” Sef said.

“Of course he didn’t.”

“So how do I tell Father?”

Lamah shrugged. It wasn’t that she didn’t know; that she didn’t have some idea of how, but that she had raised two sons of her own and half a dozen grandkids (some of which weren’t even hers) and she saw no reason to give out answers. “I’m glad you’re back. If you wait a bit, your Father will be here.”

“I’ll wait.”

\--

They were halfway through finish the evening news program when Tazim showed up in the doorway with a quiet little half-knock. A few years had taken away the softness of Tazim’s face and given definition to his jaw. He must have finally given up snacking because his whole body had slimmed down; when he smiled it seemed to take extreme effort. “Hi Grandma,” he said. He motioned at Sef’s entire existence with his hand, “I need to talk to Sef a minute. Then I’ll be back.”

Grandma was unconcerned with the display, she just smiled back, “take your time,” the very same way she would always tell them ‘close the door’ when they started rough housing as children. 

Sef picked up his jacket and his phone and followed Tazim out of the room, down the hall and out of the unit. They were standing in the mostly abandoned space in front of the elevators before Tazim stopped long enough to really look at him. 

“I heard Jaida beat the crap out of you,” Tazim announced. He had his two hands on his hips and his whole body leaning in for an explanation. “Which is unfortunate because Darim and I had already decided that I was going to hit you first.”

“I can explain,” Sef said.

“I hope it’s a life altering explanation,” Tazim hissed. “Our parents are separated, our Uncle thinks our Dad’s a child abuser. You know what, I don’t care if Jaida’s already hit you because I’m going to hit you anyway.” He was going through all the motions of pulling his wedding (had he gotten married already) ring off and sliding it into the pocket of his jeans. 

“Phyllis purposefully let Umar die,” Sef said.

“What?” Tazim said. It seemed like the words didn’t even register because Tazim was still balling up his fists. (They simply could not have a fight in the lobby of a hospital.) “Uma--Dad’s Dad? You actually figured out-- Why didn’t you say something?”

“What was I supposed to say? Guys, I think the woman who our Dad cries over once a year probably murdered his Dad in a premeditated plot to make him an orphan?” It should have sounded stupider than it did.

Tazim shouldn’t have said, “yes,” so compulsively or followed it up with, “we shared a _womb_.” But then, “you found the file? The one you were looking for in Phyllis’ office? Shit.”

“Yes,” Sef said. “Good news, no secret DNA bombs. Bad news, our Great-Grandma is a murderer.” He cleared his throat and looked back toward the unit where Lamah’s room was. “I told Dad. I was waiting for Father.”

“Oh, he’s not coming,” Tazim said. His whole face was pinched in thought. “You told Dad? How is he?”

“He said he’s fine,” Sef said. And the two of them exchanged a look like they were still close-as-ever and they announced,

“Liar,” in perfect unison. 

“Look, you go take care of Father. I’ll call Jaida and tell her to go over to Dad’s. Does she know?” Tazim barely waited long enough for Sef to shake his head no before he went on, “ok well I’ll tell her and she’ll take care of Darim. You just go deal with Father.” Then Tazim hugged him, like he always had whenever they were going their separate ways. Sef leaned into the hug and held on as long as he could manage before he got pushed back. 

\--

Father was living in a little house on an unbusy street, the exact sort of place that one would have imagined Grandma Lamah living in. (Sef tried to remember if someone had left him a message telling him how Lamah had moved.) He stood outside on the curb, looking up at the house until the sky had dimmed so much the street lamps had turned on.

He lingered on the walkway to the front door long enough that his Father opened the door and stood on the front porch shaking his head. “If you think it’s safer you can just tell me from there,” he said. Age had cushioned his Father’s body but it hadn’t weathered him the way it Altair’s. There wasn’t even gray in his black hair.

Sef was exhausted from the effort, “I’m mad at you.” 

That clearly wasn’t what Malik was expecting to hear. “I’m not happy with you either. I didn’t think I raised a kid that would run away and ignore his family.” There was a divine hypocrisy in that statement that neither of them were going to point out (but they both knew, regardless). Malik shifted on his feet, “did you come to say something?”

“You left Dad,” Sef said.

“I temporarily left to take care of my Mother; I don’t understand why everyone is blowing this out of proportion--” He was motioning with his hand, making some attempt to sound like he even believed himself. As he spoke, Sef came closer so that when he came to a stop they were looking at one another from either end of the porch steps. “Kadar said Altair asked you to come back.”

“Did you leave him because of me?” It wasn’t any question that he wanted the answer to. As bruised as he was (literally, metaphorically) it didn’t even seem like he could stand to hear the answer. Malik wouldn’t have answered him either way, not with words, but with a shift of his stance, with a tightening of his jaw as he worked around admitting the ugly things he never wanted to tell his kids. Malik was _honest_ but he had always tried to spare them ugliness. “He never did anything to me,” Sef whispered. There was his voice cracking apart again. There were the tears on his face. “How could you think he would?”

“I didn’t think he did,” Father said very quietly, “but I couldn’t prove that he hadn’t.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Of course I did.” But he hadn’t gotten the answer he wanted, or not one that he could bring himself to believe. Malik looked ashamed of himself and it wasn’t a look that Sef liked seeing on his Father’s face. 

He’d done this; all of this started because he couldn’t just leave well enough alone. Sef stared right at his father’s shamed-face and said, “I left because I finally found out what killed Grandpa Umar.” It was harder (and why?) to tell Malik than it had been to tell Altair. It was harder to grit the words between his teeth here than it had been to shout at Altair. “Phyllis let him die on purpose. He had an infection, she refused care and said his religion prohibited it. He died, probably of sepsis.”

They regarded one another in silence, Malik’s face getting rosy under the porch light as he took in the immense reality of those words. “Does he know?” Malik asked. His eyes were closed and his hand was gripped around the doorknob. 

“I told him today,” Sef said.

His Father just nodded, slow and savoring, as he worked through how he felt about that. When his eyes opened again, he had composed himself into something pretending it didn’t have feelings. “What did he say?”

“That it didn’t matter.”

“Liar,” Malik mumbled under his breath. He looked back at the house and then down at Sef. “Come on. Come inside.”

“No thank you,” he said. “I just came to tell you.” He took a step back and motioned toward the street with both hands, “I’ll probably call a cab and go back to my hotel for the night.” Where the liquor was, where he could drink himself to sleep and wake up in the morning and have this all be a bile-flavored nightmare. “It’s been a hell of a day.” 

Malik nodded at that. “If you have to,” he said.

Addiction was a funny thing like that; Sef wanted to say _I don’t want to_ but he nodded his head at his Father and pulled his phone out of his pocket to call another cab and he left it just like _that_. With all those unanswered and unsaid things because little bottles of liquor were singing his name.

\--

The thing about his siblings was, every single one of them was just as smart and just as conniving and just as rich as he was. They had been raised by a genius and a half (as Malik liked to say while Altair scoffed at the notion Malik was half anything) and there was simply nothing that could have stopped them together (or individually). 

There was no shock to his hotel door opening before midnight, no surprise to be found in the light that flipped on or the sight of his three siblings crowding the doorway. The way Jaida looked at him with so much _pain_ was unexpected, and the way Darim said, “damn it, Sef,” didn’t feel good either. 

Tazim plucked the empty bottles off the table by the bed and threw them in the trash. Darim grabbed a few and Jaida kicked her shoes off before she invited herself to sit on the bed next to him. She was kneeling at his side, looking down at him with so much anger wrapped up like regret.

“Did Malik go talk to him yet?” Sef asked.

Jaida shook her head, “Desmond was there. You’re a fucking idiot, Sef. You should have told me.” 

The bed bounced behind him and Darim yanked the blankets so they weren’t rolled up under his back. Tazim found the remote and sat on the foot of the bed. They weren’t always very good at saying anything, but Jaida shifted so she was sitting with her back against the headboard and she pulled at him until he was sitting up between her and Darim. 

“He is going to go, isn’t he?” Sef asked.

“Yeah,” Darim said. “He has to,” Tazim said. But Jaida shrugged, “you two are the same kind of stupid.”

Tazim flipped the TV on and went through the channels until he found something that looked stupid to watch. He laid down on the end of the bed with his head pillowed on his arm and they lapsed into watching like it hadn’t been years. 

\--

Sef woke up before the rest of them, he wiggled out of the bed without waking up Darim (who was hogging all the blankets) and escaped stepping on Tazim (who was spread out across the floor like a tentacle monster) and managed to find his own shoes, phone and wallet in the dark without waking anyone up. He closed the door with supernatural patience, take the utmost care to be sure not to make a sound. To be extra cautious he even tiptoed down the hall to the elevator. 

He’d just finished putting on his shoes while he waited for the elevator to come up to his floor when the doors slid open to reveal Jaida looking like she was only just getting back. They regarded one another guiltily. There was powdered sugar on Jaida’s lips and rather than pass one another with acknowledgement of the other’s guilt, she slapped her hand around the edge of the elevator door to keep it open and said, “where are you going?”

“I was going to go see Dad.”

She looked past him with great theatricality. “Where are the other two?”

“I left them.”

Jaida stepped forward and her hand slid off the door as she did. “Sef,” was so terribly, terribly patient. “The only place you’re going without us is rehab.” She waited a beat for the words to sink in and then took his wrist like he was still a disobedient toddler and pulled him back down the hallway. “I called Kadar. He says that Father’s at the hospital. He also said that we shouldn’t force them into anything, that we have to respect them as individuals and understand that it may take time for them to come together on their own.”

“I want to go see Dad,” Sef said.

“Then we go together,” Jaida answered. She banged open the hotel door with malicious glee (the sort she’d always used on her brothers) and turned on the light to the symphony of Tazim and Darim’s complaints. 

\--

They went to the house to find Dad and they found Lucy instead. She was sitting at the old kitchen table with a coffee mug between her hands and a blank expression draining all character from her face. The noise of them clattering to a stop at the entrance to the kitchen only barely drew her attention. She glanced at them and said, “he’s not here,” as if she’d had the same idea and ended up with the same result. “Desmond called the office and they said he wasn’t there either.” She let her stare linger on Sef with an unadulterated anger. Everyone else that looked at him had been upset but _trying_ to hide it. “Welcome back,” she said with absolutely no genuine feeling in it.

“Thanks,” Sef said. 

Darim was slapping his elbow to motion him away and Tazim was pulling at the back of Jaida’s shirt sleeve. It was a situation best abandoned; the sort of raw emotions that could only explode and make a bigger disaster. If Lucy were here, it meant Desmond was there and the two of them were avoiding each other until they could be civil. Lucy was very, very good at being civil for Desmond; (and not very good at being civil anywhere else). 

“Don’t look at my brother like that,” Jaida said. She’d been born without fear, (not with bravery, not like Darim who acted fearless but wasn’t, but without any sense of fear at all). She stared down Lucy like they were equals from top to bottom and added, “your husband started this shit. Remember _that_.” Then she pushed them all toward the door.

Lucy was being civil in the kitchen, gripping her kitchen mug and gritting her teeth. 

They regrouped in the front hall:

“Where else would he go?” Darim asked, “he couldn’t have gone to Desmond’s.”

“It’s too short notice for him to go to England, probably,” Tazim put in.

“It’s Dad, he could be anywhere on the planet you can reach in ten hours by now.” Jaida shoved her fingers through her bangs to lift them away from her forehead and growled low in her throat. She’d been doing it since she was a child, always growling when things didn’t go how she wanted.

“He’s at the old house,” Sef whispered.

It must have made as much sense to the rest of them as it did to him because they were all nodding together.

\--

“You got married?” Sef whispered across the backseat at Tazim. He nodded down to the ring on his finger. 

“Yeah,” Tazim said. “I sent you an invitation.” It was as close to an accusation as Tazim was likely to make. 

“I’m sorry,” Sef said. “Was it--uh, I know her name. I do. Give me a minute.”

Tazim laughed at him. “No, it wasn’t her. New girl, she’s great. You should definitely meet her when you get out of rehab.” There it was again: that thing that wasn’t optional. It was easy enough to feel piggish about it, about the assumption that he would just go because they said he had to. 

“I’d like that,” he answered.

“You still dicking other guys?” Tazim asked. “Dicking anyone special?”

Sef laughed, slouching in his seat and shaking his head at his brother. “Yes, still dicking other guys. No, not dicking anyone special.”

\--

The old house had been restored a decade and a half ago, when people caught up in the future of fancy screens had discovered a sudden wanderlust for the olden days. The mansion had always been available for tours and wedding and other events that required a certain air of sophistication about them, but the resurgence of fascination of old-old wealth had brought a fresh wave of morons to their doors.

Sef had taken the tour before, followed along after the docent with the same slack-jawed wonder as she told them all of the fabulous lifestyle of the grossly wealthy owners. She took them through the main entrance and the double staircase that awed all who saw it. She showed off the elaborate kitchen (terribly dated by modern standards) and led them down the narrow hall of the servants’ quarters. They all crowded together to fit into a model of the average servant’s suite while the docent explained how a woman named Mrs. Finch and her husband had been the last to occupy this portion of the house. (Not these rooms, because Dad would never have allowed a gawky group of outsiders into Mrs. Finch’s real rooms.)

He stood in the ballroom while she told them fabulous stories of high society. He’d walked through the gardens listening to sugar-coated fantasies of how these flowers had come to be. But he always split from the group at the roses, always went left instead of right, away and across the field to the old doghouse.

All the old cousins understood the doghouse. Sef had walked through it top to bottom and never _quite_ understood how it had come to have such significance. The only room he’d ever sat in that made any sense to him was the old study. It was dark-paneled and dim. It smelled like old, old cigars and overflowing whiskey bottles. When he stood there, he could almost understand something.

The tour included the graveyard with its elaborate gravestones, and it rattled off facts and figures about the occupants of said graveyard. A thousand (two thousand, six thousand, ten thousand) strangers had trampled the graveyard.

\--

Their parents were, without fail, almost completely predictable. Father always went home, to his brother or his Mother when he was upset. Dad always came here. They broke apart by the double staircases, not so far from the curtly embarrassed woman that had insisted they couldn’t enter without a pass. (Jaida had set her straight with a sadistic smile.)

“Graveyard?” Tazim asked.

“Office,” Darim put in.

“Roses,” Jaida corrected and then she looked at Sef.

It had been years and years since they’d seen their Dad upset enough to retreat. (At least years and years since Sef had.) He shrugged, “maybe Finch’s?”

They regarded one another, the three of them glancing back and forth before looking at him. Sef huffed a sigh. “I appreciate your concern but there are no hidden liquor bottles in this house. I can control myself. I’ll look downstairs, Darim can look upstairs, Tazim can do the graveyard and Jaida can go through the garden. Whoever finds him, calls everyone.”  
He got a chorus of general agreements.

\--

Sef looked at the locked door of Finch’s old suite to say that he had and then took the long way around to Phyllis’ old office. He ducked under the velvet ropes that barred entrance to any gawky tourist type and slid through the narrow door that led to the interior filing room. It was as dusty now as it had been when he broke into it three (four?) years ago. He found Altair sitting with his back against one of the filing cabinets, sorting through files and ledgers as thick as Bibles.

They looked at one another, Altair slid the file he was reading through off his lap and Sef pushed the door shut behind him. “What did you do with it?”

“It’s in London,” Sef said. “I was going to destroy it.”

Altair stacked the last of the ledgers neatly at his side and shifted how he was sitting. There was dust all over his pants, streaked all over his hands and spotted here-and-there on his face. “I would like to see it,” he said.

Sef nodded. He thought about offering Altair a hand to get to his feet and found himself sliding down to sit opposite him instead. “I told Father.”

Altair nodded. “I heard.”

“Jaida said that Desmond came to see you?”

“Yes,” Altair agreed. Then, as if he were dredging it up from the very pit of his stomach he said, “Sef, _none_ of this is your fault. You are not responsible for what happened while you were gone, _you_ are not responsible for what Phyllis did.” (Yes, well, those were just interpretations of the truth.) “It’s not your fault and I do not blame you.”

“It feels like my fault,” Sef said.

His Dad looked at him with weighted sadness. He stretched out his foot to kick it against Sef’s and so he’d look up again. “When your idiot Father was young, he was convinced that his Mother would hate him and he did the exact same thing you did. He ran away, he did stupid things, and when he finally came back he found out that what he thought was catastrophic wasn’t.”

“But this is. He should have come back by now.”

Altair laughed. “Your Father is a great many _good_ things but he is not _good_ at coping with things like this. It doesn’t matter what happens next, to me or to him, or to us. You have to take care of you.”

“I have to fix this,” Sef said.

“You can’t,” Altair said. Maybe he meant the words to be gentle but they were like knives. They were everything he had been sure of when he stood not so far from his Father the night before. There _were_ some things for which there was no resolution. “This isn’t up to you.”

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

There was no disguising the fear on Altair’s face. It was as real as the doubt that had crippled Malik. “I believe he will. You can’t push him, he’ll just stay away longer.” Then, as if the whole matter were resolved, “Jaida is very upset that you’re an alcoholic now.”

Sef snorted at that. “Well, I’m not thrilled about it myself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Rehab, so I’m told.”

And his Dad just shook his head. “Son,” he said (like he always did when he was about to impart worldly wisdom), “you might as well be your Father’s clone. You’ll be doing nothing but wasting your time if you walk into a rehab because your sister is pushing you. You have to go because it’s what you want.”

Sef was thinking about crying; thinking about his siblings (waiting on him to call, and there was failing them again). “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“I’ll take you,” Altair said softly, “wherever you decide, whenever you want to go. You have to make that choice for yourself, not because you’re waiting on Malik, not because Jaida said you have to, not for me or your brothers. You have to go because you want to.”

“Ok,” Sef whispered. And, before his courage could fail him, “I want to go.”

\--

Altair hugged him at the door of the rehab and said, “do your best,” the way he had when he sent them to school, and summer camp, and university. Sef hugged him as tight as he could and said, “tell them all I’m sorry, that I had to do this by myself.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was his Father that picked him up. Sef had called Jaida to tell her the day and time he was being released back into the wild; she had almost forgiven him for disappearing a month ago and she seemed like she was perfectly willing to come and retrieve him. But, there was Father looking entirely out of place loitering outside a high-class rehab. 

“I thought Jaida was coming,” Sef said.

Father nodded. “She was but I wanted to.” He led them to the car and opened the trunk so Sef could throw his bag in. It was stuff Dad had brought him later, not things he’d gone in with (since he’d walked in with nothing but the clothes on his back). They were sitting inside, absorbing the cool interior before Father finally said, “your Grandma is doing better.”

“That’s good,” Sef said. 

“She’s moving out to California with Kadar for a while, she said,” Father added. 

“She finally get tired of the snow?”

Father shrugged. 

“How’s Dad?” Sef asked. It was the one question that he’d been very careful not to think too much about for the past month. He’d kept all his talks with Jaida light and on topic, telling her the treatment was going well and he was on track to get out as projected. He’d taking up knitting (of all things) to keep his hands busy while he read medical journals in his room like retraining himself not to find something tasty to drink. 

“He was in England for two weeks,” Father said, “he just got back.”

That was not good news. Sef watched the traffic move in front of them, tried to figure out what to say to that revelation and why it had always been harder to demand answers from Malik than it had from Altair. “Have you talked to him?”

“Briefly,” Malik said. 

“Are you going back?” Sef asked.

The thing about Father was he was _stubborn_. He was so pointlessly, uselessly, maliciously stubborn. Nothing good ever came from Father’s stubbornness and still he persisted in it. The only person on the whole planet that wasn’t driven to screaming fits over it was Dad. (And that, by itself, was enough to make any rational person behave irrationally.) Malik chewed over the question like he’d been worrying away at it for a month. “I’d like to,” was what he came up with.

“So do,” Sef prompted.

“It’s complicated.”

“No, it’s not,” Sef snapped back.

“You don’t understand everyth--”

“I understand that you left him. If it hasn’t been you with him all this time, who the hell has been there? One of the _cousins_? You’re his _husband_ , he just found out his dad was murdered and you’re making excuses about why you didn’t show up?”

Father tolerated insolence without grace. (Yet, he’d managed to raise four insolent children.) “Why is it that all of you children think he’s so perfect?” was the tip of an entirely different iceberg. “What about him suggests that he isn’t capable of cruelty?”

“Maybe he’s better at hiding it than you,” Sef said (because he was angry, because it was true). As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. He marinated in the sudden frostiness of the room as his Father did his level best to pretend they weren’t even in a car anymore. “Father,” he said.

“You’re not a child,” Father interrupted. “So, I won’t treat you like one. I _understand_ that you discovered something that you thought would be upsetting to your Dad. And I have had it _thoroughly_ explained to me how your actions must have seemed like the only course. I am even aware of the _hypocrisy_ of being angry at you for doing exactly what I did as a young man. But none of that lessens the impact of your choices. You chose not to tell anyone. Not your sister, not me, not Desmond, not your brothers. There were dozens of people that could have helped you with this and you chose to leave rather than trust us. Because of that, things fell apart. It wasn’t _just_ me.”

“Dad would never have hurt us!” Sef shouted. “Things fell apart because you didn’t believe him!”

“You have _no_ idea what Altair is capable of!”

“I know what he’s not capable of!”

They skidded to a short stop in the parking lot of an ugly diner. Malik turned enough in his seat to look at him, and there they were: the perfect pair of red faces and disbelief. For a minute, his Father was staring at him like he was a stranger, as if he needed to up his defenses and dust off his debating gloves. 

“I’ll get out here,” Sef said before Father could speak again. He kicked the door open and walked away, not even bothering to glance back to see if Father tried to stop him. 

\--

Two hours later, he let himself into his childhood house and found it empty. The shadowed silence of it was more heartbreaking than the idea that he might have permanently broken apart his parents’ marriage. He didn’t bother with lights, but climb the stairs to his own bedroom and dropped into his bed. He fell asleep thinking violent and unkind things about his Father.

\--

Jaida was in the kitchen in the morning, looking surly and noticeably pregnant as she slapped around pans and plates. There was nobody else (as far as he could tell) in the house with them. But she made food like she was feeding an army and there were heaps of everything. “You’re a fucking natural disaster, Sef,” she snapped at him as soon as he shuffled into the kitchen. “You deserve your own categorization system. I cannot _believe_ you!”

Sef scrubbed his scalp through his hair, “what the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

Jaida slapped a metal spatula against the stove. Jaida looked like Lamah, who looked more like Malik than Kadar, and still Jaida was almost entirely Altair’s child. She drew in a breath and she said, “I don’t know,” gave in when Malik would have fought. 

“Where’s Dad?” Sef asked.

“He’s been staying at the hotel by the office. He says he likes the room service,” Jaida said. She motioned at the table, overladen with food, and Sef sat in the same chair he’d sat in all his life. She sat in hers and they stared at one another. 

“Is this my fault?”

Jaida shook her head, “no.”

“Did Desmond go with Dad to England?”

“Yes,” she said. “For the first week. He came home and said that we should just let Dad have some time.”

Sef nodded. He thought about eating some French toast but it never made it to his plate. “How far along are you?”

“Six months,” Jaida said.

“Is there a father?”

“There was a sperm donor,” Jaida amended. “I thought about adopting but Dad said that I don’t have the temperament. He said, ‘Jaida, you wouldn’t have the patience to deal with a child who might not meet your expectations if you didn’t give birth to it’.” She shrugged that off.

Sef leaned back into his chair. “What’s Darim doing?”

“He’s finally back in school. Tazim and him decided that someone had to take over for Dad sooner or later and somehow they voted Darim into that position.” She rolled her eyes at the whole notion of _Darim_ managing Dad’s position.

“And what, you’re going to let him get a PHd in business and make him your secretary?” Sef asked.

“I prefer the term executive assistant,” she said. “Secretary is a bit antiquated. Ever so slightly sexist.” They regarded one another across a table full of food that neither of them was likely to eat. “Are you going back to London?”

“I don’t know,” Sef said. “I had a decent position there but I could find something comparable here. Or not, I could just live off the dividends until I die.” He didn’t linger on the bitter idea that the only reason he’d ever taken such an interest in medicine was to solve the mystery of his grandparents. He’d managed to break down what killed them all; and not a single discovery had brought him any sort of comfort. He’d thought it over in therapy; how he was going to cope with all that knowledge. “Do you think Dad would let me write a biography of Phyllis?”

“Probably,” Jaida said. “Are you going to call her a murderer?”

“Not outright,” Sef said. He stabbed his fork into a short stack of french toast and pulled it onto his plate. “Everything you need to know about her is in that filing room. I’ve already read most of it and I have the access to the surviving family. If Dad says I can, I’d be best candidate.”

“He probably would let you. I would leave out the part where she murdered our Grandpa. Not for her sake.”

Sef plucked apart the bread with his fingers and chewed it slowly while he thought it through. “Did you think Dad could have hurt us?”

There was his big sister, larger than life, unflappably loyal, sighing to herself. She spooned a bit of eggs onto her plate to distract herself from thinking about it. “Yes,” she whispered so quietly she must have thought she could deny it if necessary. “He is objectively capable of it. I read all of Father’s old blog before he finally took it down. I looked up all the old articles. I remember, when I was six or seven, I didn’t want to sleep so I was laying on the stairs listening to stupid cousins talk and the Auditore brothers--those morons--they were talking about how nobody ever found out what happened to Desmond’s Dad. They were laughing about it, you know? About how wherever Dad put him, they would never find his bones.”

“Fuck,” Sef whispered. “Did you ask Dad about it?”

“Yes,” Jaida said. “I went to the office with him and I asked him what happened to Desmond’s dad, I told him what I heard. He said, sometimes there cannot be justice so there must be vengeance. He said that Desmond deserved to be protected.”

“I can’t imagine Dad hurting anyone,” Sef said.

“Dad wouldn’t hurt us, though,” Jaida said. She pulled the eggs apart, left them as little crumbles across the plate. “That’s probably because he’s afraid he might. He’s always been afraid of that. Father’s never been afraid of hurting us because he’s never believed he had the potential.”

“That explains a lot,” Sef whispered. “The longer Father stays away, the less likely he is to ever come back.”

“Well, fuck him,” Jaida said. “You make your bed and you sleep in it.” (A thing that Malik was likely to say in one way or another, all throughout their childhood.) “How much do you know about obstetrics? I have an appointment today, you could come and translate the medical jargon.”

“I know enough. You can read me the business section and we’ll be even.”

Jaida laughed and Sef smiled and the silence of the house settled all around them like a blanket.

\--

Jaida had an office in Dad’s building. It was two floors higher than Dad’s, with a far nicer view and a streamlined heartlessness that struck fear into anyone that mistook her for her Father’s child. Sef left her in the elevator after her appointment (everything was good, there was nothing to worry over) to sit in his Dad’s well-lit waiting room. It was an hour before he managed to get in to see Altair and even then, he was stealing time from other appointments.

Altair hugged him when he came in and looked him over for any sign of damage or difference. “How are you?” he asked.

“Good.” It almost wasn’t a lie. He’d left his yarn and needles in the trunk of Father’s car. There wasn’t much of anything to distract him from his own stupid head without Jaida around to argue against preconceived notions of nuclear families and the slow shift away from that ideal back to a more traditional setup of multi-generational households. (It was a great deal of sound, and noise, just for Jaida to say that she wanted to move in with her parents.) “You?”

“Fine,” Altair said.

“Did you find the file?”

“Yes.” Altair motioned for him to sit and rather than retiring to his chair behind the desk, sat in the seat next to him. “I need you to leave Malik alone, Sef. He can’t be shoved.” That was important. “I appreciate your support but please let me handle it.”

It was easy as pie to give Altair that trust. Still, Sef said, “did you ever kill anyone?”

The silence that followed that question was too long; it was far too weighted. At the end of it, Altair said, “no. I have exacted non-lethal vengeance on people. I find it is more effective and it involves less legal repercussions.”

That wasn’t entirely comforting. “I know how you appreciate a good technicality,” Sef said. 

Altair smiled. “You look good,” he said. “You’re back at the house for now?”

“Yeah,” Sef agreed. “Dad,” was the start of a question he wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he could ask, (and even as he opened his mouth to ask it, it changed itself around to): “Will you come back?”

“Soon,” Altair said. Then he said, “what are you going to do now?” and Sef made a good show of babbling off about his possible futures in medicine and genetic research. It was easy to vomit the varied timelines of possibility while he tried not to think too hard about how he wasn’t likely to do any of them.

\--

Sef wanted a drink more than he wanted to untangle yarn. There was a missing ambiance from sitting in the backyard, after dark, without a tall bottle of something to drink. Instead of liquor, or beer, or wine (because he was an equal opportunity drunk), he was pulling apart the massive knot the baby yarn had gotten itself into. The rocking chair he was sitting in was, at very least, entirely appropriate for the situation. “Fuck,” he hissed at the yarn when he lost the war. It was looped around every one of his fingers, sitting in a heap between his feet on the deck. 

“I heard you took up knitting.” Lucy was standing by the steps of the deck, one of her hands loosely around the handrail and the other hanging at her side. 

“Yeah,” Sef said. He tried to pull his fingers free and succeeded in tangling the yarn up more. There was no peaceful quiet between him and Lucy, but something jagged and half-resolved. “Were you looking for Dad?” he asked when the weight of being observed was too much. 

“No.” Lucy invited herself up the stairs and into the chair next to his. Her face was pressed into something like restrained amusement at his continued struggles. “I never cared for crafts.”

“Doesn’t Uncle Kadar have a collection of cups you drew for him?” Sef asked. He was working up a head of steam, all set to start shouting at the yarn when he found the magic loop and it all fell apart in his fingers. He pinched it together and started rolling it as a ball.

“Yes. That was different though. I don’t like yarn, or paint, or glue.” She watched him while she rocked the chair and the old deck creaked as it settled. “I know that, before you went to rehab I seemed angry at you. I was angry at you.”

“Yeah,” Sef agreed. He was half-finished rolling the ball when he looked over at her, “I got that. There’s a line, though. So, you have to join the queue.”

“It’s been my experience that it’s far easier to be angry at someone else than it is to be angry at yourself. I’ve got maybe a four-year head start being mad at you for things that you didn’t do. Desmond told me what you found out about your Grandfather.” She paused there, marinated on that notion, and then sighed. “I can’t imagine what that must have felt like, kid. I’ve lived a blessed life. My parents died happy, at home, surrounded by people that loved them. My only child lives down the street, I see my granddaughter any time I want. I’m _incapable_ of imagining what it must have felt like for you.”

“Not good,” Sef said because she was waiting for something.

Lucy smiled but there was nothing funny in it. “It’s easy to blame you. The alternative is having to blame myself, to blame Desmond for the things we did and said.”

“Was it bad?” Sef asked.

“It was ugly,” Lucy said. Her voice was so soft it almost got lost in the low light. She rocked in her chair while she thought that over, and her head started shaking like she could just knock the notion loose and it would go. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said, at _last_. “None of this was your fault. You’ve always been a damn good kid—probably the most level, most thoughtful kid out of all of them. You tried to protect your Dad, and _everyone_ would have done the same thing you did. Don’t let any of them tell you otherwise.”

“Father wouldn’t have,” Sef whispered.

“Malik is full of shit,” Lucy corrected.

They both laughed at that. Sef finished rolling the yarn ball and leaned back into the rocking chair. That old, dark guilt was churning up in his gut again and it made him think fondly of those not-so-long-ago days when he could fill his nights up with liquor. “Are they okay? Dad and Desmond?”

“They will be. What about you?”

“It’s a work in progress.” He sorted through his needles until he found the ones he wanted and they sat quietly together. The silence was easier, _lighter_ , so when Sef said: “you really think Malik wouldn’t have told him?”

Lucy laughed with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. “Malik would have moved to a tent in the desert rather than face Altair knowing what you knew. Your Father acts like he knows things, but he’s helpless against Altair and he always has been.”

“So why won’t he come back?” Sef asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy whispered. “He’ll get there. He just can’t be rushed.” They lapsed into silence again, with just the chairs rocking and the tip-tap of the needles. After a time, Lucy said, “it’s good to have you back, kid.” She lifted herself out of the chair and came over to run her fingers through his hair (like she always had) and kissed the top of his head. He stayed still while she did it and only dropped the needles and yarn to the side when she moved away. She was terribly-thin beneath her clothes when he hugged her but she was fiercely strong with both her arms around him. “You know where I live,” she said against his chest, “don’t get lost again.”

That was the thing, how Lucy had always filled up the space that his Mother had left empty. Lucy was always present, always close enough to run to, and always _available_ for whatever Malik and Altair couldn’t be. “Ok,” he said. 

\--

Jaida made them a small, civilized breakfast in the morning. She was wearing her day-off clothes like she had any intention of not going into the office. Her dark hair was swept up away from her face as she stared out through the windows. “Why Phyllis?” she asked with her eyes all out of focus.

It had been years of sort of thought and weeks of intense thought (in therapy, at rehab), working out exactly why it had to be Phyllis. He’d meandered all along a thousand thoughts of how he could have written a biography of anyone, of how it wasn’t Phyllis that he cared about but his Father and his Dad and how they’d come to be. He’d intensely discussed talking points over how he just wanted to _know_ the unknowable things about his life. But it always came back to Phyllis, to her roped-off office, to the shadowy old dog house that stood in a lost corner of the old estate. It all started there. “It has to be her,” Sef answered. It was the only thing he knew for sure.

His sister didn’t dispute it.

“I think I’m going to go up to the old house,” he said. “For a day or two. I’ll call you tonight.”

“Okay,” Jaida said. She made it sound almost true. “Be good,” she said with a smile.

“I’ll do my best,” Sef agreed.

\--

Sef arrived during tour hours. He paid an admittance fee at the gate by the door and sent the car that brought him away. It had seemed important not to bring much with him when he was back in his childhood bedroom packing things for the trip. All he’d brought with him was a canvas bag of yarn and needles he held in his fist as he walked up the long-long drive toward the house.

There was a plaque halfway up the drive that announced the date it had been built, that spoke of his Great-Great Grandfather and how he’d made millions at the turn of the century. They’d dug up a picture of the old man, fat as a hog, sitting on a chair that was nearly eclipsed by his girth. There were sons in the picture with him, two or three boys that never made it to adulthood. 

Sef met with the tour group by the podium just inside the front door. While everyone was listening to the ground rules (no touching, stay with the group, don’t cross the ropes), he pulled his ID out of his wallet to show the woman behind the podium. “Hi,” he said as a means of introduction, “this is my house.”

“The house is currently open for public viewing,” she said back. She scanned his ID and handed it back. “For simplicity’s sake, I would appreciate it if you could attempt to avoid openly crossing the barriers in front of the tour groups. We lost someone in the upper left wing after the last time.”

“Is that why you’re offering downloadable maps now?” Sef asked. He motioned at the little placard inviting everyone to get their own personal GPS map of the house. It boasted a narrated tour of the house if they did not want to wait for a docent. 

The woman (April) smiled at him. “One of the reasons. Please let me know if you need anything.”

Sef smiled back, “thank you,” and slipped his ID back into his wallet and tucked it away in his pocket. The tour always started downstairs, gliding through the kitchen and the servant quarters and up the side stairs (because descending the grand staircase was much more impressive than climbing it) so he went straight up. Most of the family bedrooms were open for public viewing.

Phyllis’ room (the master suite, as it was called) was always open. Its double doors were thrown open to investigation. The bed covers were restored to original vibrancy and the wood was polished once a week. It gleamed and glistened under observation. The photos of the woman who occupied it artfully displayed, the replica brushes and combs laying in their little puddles of dust. Her room was nothing but a museum exhibit, artfully unlived in. 

Sef went to the room his Dad had lived in when he was a child. It was a single closed door down a long hallway of open ones. The docents that gave the tour referred to it as a ‘guest room’ when anyone asked, and said it was very similar in style and type to the one next to it. The door opened soundlessly and Sef slipped inside. 

The room had not aged since Phyllis had died.

This was his Dad at eleven, stuck in time when the only parent he’d ever had died. Sef sat on the floor at the foot of the bed and leaned against it. There was a feeling here, right _here_ , that he’d spent half his life chasing after. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers across the old rug under the bed. 

\--

It was after closing hours when April found him sitting in his Dad’s old bathtub (contemplating fish stories). “Sir,” she said, “I’ve dismissed the staff.” It was as close as she would come to saying that he needed to leave. The old house was putting itself to sleep; and Sef was getting in the way.

Rather than argue, or make excuses, he lifted himself up and out of the tub. He grabbed his bag where it was at the end of the bed and followed her out of the room. They went down the grand staircase, at the bottom she went toward the kitchen. All the keys to the outbuildings were kept in the lock box in the kitchen. It was mounted to the wall and even all these years later had a numerical lock to open it. 

“Did you need me to call a ride for you?” April asked.

Sef stared at the box and said, “uh, no.” He was pulling his own phone out of his pocket. He found his Dad’s number and smiled at her while he waited for the call to be answered. When his Dad picked up, he said, “hi Dad. I’m at the old house and I lost track of time, can I stay in the doghouse tonight?” 

April was looking at him with disbelief. 

Altair cleared his throat, “there’s no food in the dog house and nothing delivers there this late,” he had the sound of a man looking at his watch. 

“But the other utilities work?” Sef asked. “I can go grab something to eat.”

April was just short of tapping her toes at him.

“Yes, everything works.” There was a half-thing he wasn’t saying. (Possibly something about all the liquor in the doghouse and how it had never been moved.) “You’ll have to get the key from the box in the kitchen. I’ll call and tell them you’re allowed to stay.”

Sef looked at April’s unsmiling face, “uh, she’s standing right here, Dad. You can talk to her now if you want.” And they agreed that was a good idea, Sef handed her the phone after his Dad told him the combination.

\--

Sef had called a car to take him to the grocery store, so there was no explaining how he’d ended up purchasing a new tablet and keyboard, or clothes for a few days, or enough food for at least a week, and new pans and utensils and linens. He had stocked up on everything he needed to settle into place (and more yarn, lots and lots more yarn). 

There were only three bedrooms in the dog house. He knew from long-long family reunions that the big one had been Calvin’s, the one closest to the stairs had been Edward’s and the one between had belonged to nobody. He made his bed in the empty room, testing out the ancient mattress cautiously and finding that aside a dusty smell, it was perfectly comfortable.

He made dinner in a kitchen that was out of date by four decades. He ate at the table in the corner.

\--

It was easy enough to convince himself that it hadn’t been _purposeful_ that Sef had accidentally bought paper big enough to cover a whole wall in the kitchen. He’d just meandered, bored and unable to sleep, through taking down all the pictures in the kitchen. He’d tripped and stuck the paper up with thumb tacks. He’d been looking for a slotted spoon when he happened across a pack of markers that still worked. 

And well, Sef always did sleep better when he had a puzzle to solve and that was how he’d written out a family tree. It wasn’t his fault he’d memorized Phyllis’ family line from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. 

Since there was paper left over and he had a few pens that he always carried with him, he started a timeline to the right of the family tree. It started with the day Phyllis was born and it ran year-by-year until she died. He left open slots for the things he didn’t know and it nagged him all through breakfast.

So, it was not his fault at all that he ended up calling Emily. She answered her phone on the third ring (as she always did) and said, “yes?” (as she always did).

“It’s Sef.”

“I have caller ID,” she said (as she always did), “what do you need?” 

Some of the other kids held the private opinion that Emily had been raised without manners and that she was, without a doubt, the rudest person the family had produced in at least two generations. Sef tended to agree that Emily disregarded the need for most social niceties but he appreciated her uncomplicated bluntness. “What year was your Dad born?”

“19—uh, 1974.”

“What year did his Mother die?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said. “I’m not very well versed in his early history; it’s not something that he likes to talk about.” Before Sef could ask her if there were any circumstances in which Edward might part with some information regarding the year years of Phyllis’ psychotic reign, Emily said: “you could look up the public record. Her name was Ruth Kenway. I think she died in England.”

“Thanks,” Sef said. He leaned back into the kitchen chair and stared at the wall, “do you think Edward would talk to me about Phyllis?”

“For what purpose?” Emily asked. 

“I want to write a biography.”

The silence that followed was deafening. The very best thing about Emily was that she had the ability to think through her responses before she shared them, and the worst thing is that there was no knowing how long it would take her to arrive at such a response. She finally said, “for what purpose? It doesn’t seem like it would be in your best interest to find out any more family secrets.” (The thing about his family was that it networked seamlessly, so that any new information that was discovered was spread across the entire web in a matter of minutes.)

“It just feels like I have to,” Sef said.

Emily hummed. “I’ll talk to Dad about it. He might agree as long as you don’t pry into his personal history.” 

“Thanks, Emily.”

“Yeah,” Emily said before she hung up on him. 

After, he was just sitting in the kitchen, looking at the sheet of half-empty paper hanging on the kitchen wall. There were dozens of facts that needed to be filled in, and dozens of his relatives that he could call to question. (Like his Dad, who might know better than most.) Instead, Sef packed up his tablet and the portable scanner he’d bought and made the hike back up to the old house.

\--

Sef was sitting with his back to a filing cabinet and one of the old ledgers full of Phyllis’ precise writing spread open on his lap when the phone rang. He picked it up without bothering to check who was calling and answered it with a distracted, “hello?”

He was expecting Jaida’s daily call to ask him what the hell he was doing and remind him that he hadn’t asked permission to be creating a biography. He wasn’t expecting Edward to say, “Emily said you were researching Phyllis and that you had some questions.” (Of course, Emily had argued her Dad into revealing his long-held secrets. Of course, she’d managed it in a matter of hours.) “I’m willing to give you what answers I know.”

“Oh,” Sef pushed the ledger to the side and pulled the tablet into his lap. He hadn’t brought the keyboard with him because he hadn’t anticipated needing to write anything in depth. “Yes,” didn’t sound like he had any idea what he was doing. “I have several questions, I understand if you’re not comfortable answering them, I’m just trying to—”

“Did Phyllis really let Altair’s dad die?” Edward asked.

Sef said, “yes,” like he wasn’t even sure himself. Maybe he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Edward. (Who seemed like the one out of all of them to believe it without question, and still let out a sound like it shocked him.) “Ok?” he asked.

“Sure,” Edward agreed. “I’ll answer what I can.”

They fell into an uneasy back and forth. Sef asked for dates, and events, and impressions of events. Edward told him what he knew with caution, like he was mentally changing the names so nobody was completely incriminated. It ended with Edward (exhausted by the effort) saying, “Finch always said it was Calvin that broke Phyllis.”

Sef scrolled up through his notes, “because of the illegitimate kids?”

“That was just the last straw,” Edward said. “Calvin was—” There was that stutter of noise, the not-said things. Whatever story there was behind it, Edward didn’t like dredging it up. “I’ll put it this way, Calvin liked girls. He didn’t like women.”

“Calvin was a pedophile?” (Wasn’t that just a cherry on the fucking cake, after everything else.) Sef found the timeline he’d started on the tablet and looked for the year Phyllis got married. She had been young but he’d simply assumed it was a symptom of the era and not an indication of anything else. 

“Something very like it,” Edward said. “He always said, he seduced Phyllis for her money. You’re sure about Umar?”

“Yes,” Sef said.

Edward sighed again. “That old bitch always said, she never loved anyone until she loved Altair. It shouldn’t surprise me; she did everything short of murder.” And then, like it only occurred to him, “if your Dad lets you, Finch probably has it all written down somewhere. They were best friends, Mrs. Finch and Phyllis. They grew up together.”

“Thank you,” Sef said. “I’m sorry if this was upsetting; I really appreciate your time and honesty.”

“No problem, kid.”

\--

The problem with desecrating Finch’s rooms was that, it was not only his Dad’s history he’d be digging through. Her rooms held more secrets than Phyllis’ because Finch had (as far as Sef knew) been universally beloved by every member of the family. All of the cousins visited her grave, they left her flowers and trinkets and spoke of her in hushed, reverent tones. Maybe Sef thought his Dad would forgive him; maybe he wasn’t sure about the rest of them.

\--

It was day seven, when he could no longer pretend he wasn’t taking up residence in the doghouse. Sef was doing his laundry in machines as old as dinosaurs, sitting on the knocking washer and reading through the files he’d spent the day before scanning. A storm had snuck across the massive garden overnight and was pounding against the roof and the windows. 

The paper in the kitchen had been filled in with red ink, all the places where Calvin showed up in Phyllis’ history. Sef was maintaining an impartial view of the man in an attempt toward fairness, but there was no ignoring how Calvin had walked into Phyllis life when she was only a child.

\--

Federico was easy to talk to in a way exactly opposite to how Edward was difficult. All of Federico’s family history was an open book that had made headlines that were easy enough to look up in online archives. He gave an interview without preamble, sitting in his den at his house while Sef sat in Phyllis’ office and took notes in old notebook. 

“Did you know Maud?” Sef asked. They’d worked all through Federico’s earliest memories, and what he knew of his Mother’s history. Half of it was hearsay because everyone who know anything knew that Federico and his Mother had never gotten along. But even a biased reporter had more information than Sef did in regard to Maria Auditore. 

“Briefly,” Federico said. “We didn’t have much reason to interact, she was a teenager and I was a toddler. She spent most of her time with Phyllis.”

“Did Maud like Phyllis?”

“I believe so,” Federico said.

Sef stopped scribbling and said, “did Phyllis like Maud?”

Federico shrugged then. “There has to be some reason she loved Altair, maybe it started with Maud.”

“I thought it would have been opportunity. Phyllis always wanted a child and Altair was a child that needed a Mother.” (Because not even Sef, neck deep in facts and figures, could be entirely impartial.) “The final step was removing his Father so he was completely alone.”

“Phyllis had plenty of opportunities to be a Mother. She could have kept any of the kids: William, my Mother, Ruth— She could have had Edward because God knows he never had a Mother either. She didn’t want any of them.” He paused a moment, “if Phyllis wanted a child that nobody could take from her, she had her pick. Altair still had family. He had grandparents. She even took him to visit his other Grandmother every year.”

“What about Calvin?” Sef asked.

Federico was unforgiving, “Calvin was a dick, and he deserved what he got.”

That wasn’t exactly ripe with details, but Federico was being called away. Sef thanked him for his help and stared at his skeleton notes while he tried to work his way around to some conclusion. 

\--

The daily trips to-and-from the old house had trimmed off the fat he’d gathered from spending three years drinking too much and eating nothing but prepared food. It also afforded him the opportunity to watch the whole of the massive garden come slowly into bloom. When he started out, he went through the buds without taking a single moment to care about them, but almost three weeks later, he lingered through the flowers.

This was an aspect of Phyllis that was projected into the world: as if the presence of this carefully crafted beauty could erase the ugliness behind them. Some of the flowers had survived the decades since her death, some of them had been carefully replaced. Sef was up to his ears in trying to reason out this woman (to reconcile her vindictiveness and this gentleness) so he didn’t hear the footsteps until a polite voice interrupted him.

“Excuse me,” a man in a gardener’s uniform (with dirt-covered fingers) said. “We really prefer that you not touch the flowers.”

Sef pulled his hand back. “Sorry,” he said.

“Are you lost?” the man (Anson the name tag said), “these gardens don’t look very confusing from the outside but there’s a lot of paths. I can help you find the exit.”

“Thank you,” Sef said, “I’m not lost.” He thought about adding that it was his house (more or less) and smiled rather than share that bit. “What time do the gardens close?”

“About twenty minutes.” Anson’s smile didn’t falter, but he shifted uneasily on his feet. It was the same way April looked at him sometime, like she knew he was going to do nothing but complicate his life. He’d taken to ducking through the back hallways and sneaking out through the less obvious exits just to avoid running into her. “Are you sure you know where you are?”

“Yes,” Sef assured him. “I’ll just be another minute. Thank you.”

Anson lingered, and then hesitated, and then finally left.

\--

It had come to the point where Sef could not proceed without permission. He had called the only cousins that might not have immediately given away his plan. Desmond was the next logical phone call to make. The next logical step was to go into Finch’s rooms. He couldn’t do either without speaking to his Dad.

That must have been why he found himself lounging on the porch of the old doghouse, knitting another sweater for Jaida’s winter baby (a girl, of course). He’d mastered a pretty stitch he thought she might like (but who knew with Jaida) and after three days of effort wrangled a color preference out of her. 

It wasn’t what he wanted. Those bottles of liquor in Calvin’s den were singing to him like sirens lying on rocks, but Sef sat out on the porch knitting the sweater, thinking about not thinking about calling his Dad.

\--

It didn’t precisely surprise him when he was woken up (on a Sunday morning) but the unhappy sound of knocking on the door. He’d been there a month (or so) and not a single person (not even the grounds-keeping staff) had ever knocked on his door. The only visitor he’d had were the car drivers that took him into the city to retrieve necessary supplies. 

“I’m coming!” he shouted from the upstairs hallway. He was still pulling his shirt over his head when he opened the door (thinking it must have been April giving him an eviction notice for leaving papers on Phyllis desk again). He was blurry-eyed, unprepared, and under dressed to be greeted with his Father standing on the front porch with a bag over his shoulder. “Father?” he said.

Malik didn’t invite himself in but stay on his side of the door. “I heard that you were working on a research project.” (Yes, but how had he heard that.) “I thought you might want help.”

“Uh,” Sef said. He straightened his shirt and tried to push his hair away from his face, and looked over his shoulder at how he’d taken to just leaving his clean clothes lying on the furniture in the living room. “I—” wasn’t awake enough for this. “Come in,” he said instead. “I’ll make some coffee.”

They ended up in the kitchen, with his Father’s bag sitting ominously on a chair while he looked at the paper on the wall. It was covered, now, with important dates and times. There was red and blue and purple and green ink everywhere. The kitchen table was overtaken with pages he’d scanned and sorted. His tablet (full of incriminating notes) was propped against a pile and his notebook full of interview notes and impressions was laying boldly open by yesterday’s breakfast dishes. 

“Does Dad know?” Sef asked. He poured his Father’s cup of coffee and offered it to him. 

Malik took it from him, “yes,” without any explanation. He sipped his coffee just to test it and hummed when he found it acceptable. Three fingers and a thumb were holding onto the mug when he stabbed his first finger on the paper over a date with the name ‘Walters’ next to it. “The lawyer?”

“I guess,” Sef said. “There’s Walters and Ferdinand and they show up in her notes a lot. I thought Dad had lawyers named Walters and Ferdinand but when I looked them up, it was hard to find anything about them. Either set, but especially the ones that Phyllis would have had.”

There was that look, that smug look that Father got when he knew the answer and nobody else did. If it weren’t so much like looking in the mirror, it would have aggravated him more. “They kept a low profile. They were the lawyers you called to make something technically illegal, legal again.”

“Did you know them?” Sef asked.

“I knew the second set,” Malik corrected. He turned to look at the stacks of paper on the table. “I never met the originals, at all. But they took care of things when these kids attacked Kadar when he was in high school and your Dad sent those two to deal with it. They foreclosed the kids’ houses, they got them expelled from school, they took away their scholarships and had their parents fired.”

“You let them do that?” Sef asked.

Malik shrugged. 

“You?” Sef repeated, “you the Father who made us stand and apologize to one another and told us there was never anything that couldn’t be solved with the use of words, the one that never accepted violence or creative vengeance, _you_?”

“Yes well, for some things there is no justice so there must be vengeance.” Then he set the coffee cup down on the table and picked up a sheet of paper. “I have two degrees,” he said by the way of offering his assistance. “I have written a book or two in my life.”

“This is kind of a passion project.”

There was Father’s exaggerated nod. “Do you have an outline?”

Yes, he did, and a rough draft of a few chapters. Sef wasn’t about to admit that to anyone though. “I’m just not sure that we would work well together given our present circumstances.” 

Malik dropped the sheet of paper that he was holding and looked at Sef. They were an imperfect mirror of each other. When Sef was younger, he had tried to reason out which of them belonged to which parent based on their recessive traits. When he was eleven he’d asked for a DNA test to see which one of them was his biological parent and Malik had talked him out of it based solely on how it didn’t matter. They were all the sum of their Fathers. If there was any doubt of that, one only needed to look at Jaida who had all of Altair’s traits wrapped up in Malik’s DNA. “I thought our present circumstances might make it easier to work together.”

“How?”

“I assume,” what a surprise for Malik to make assumptions, “you are looking for answers about what you found.”

“As I understand it, most intellectual pursuits are an attempt to answer a question.”

Malik gave him a flat glare for parroting his words. “Your Dad’s been trying to figure this woman out since he was a child. I don’t think even he knows this much.”

“How does that help you and me?” Sef asked.

Malik licked his lips and picked up his cup with an air of carelessness that didn’t carry well. He looked back at the paper like it disappointed him, “he loves her. He always has. She did terrible things and she deserves to be remembered as a monster, because she was one.” He looked away from the paper, “but he deserves better than that.”

Sef was leaning against the counter, “so you’re here for answers? About Dad?”

“I’m here to look for the proof that she loved him,” Malik said. 

And well, there was simply no way to say no to that. “I need to get into Finch’s rooms. Do you think he’d let me?”

“Yes,” Malik said. “You’ll have to tell him why.”

“Doesn’t he know?”

“Of course he does. You still should tell him. Where’s your outline?” Malik went around the table to the tablet (muttering as soon as he saw it about kids and their tiny electronics). He was polite enough for Sef to pull up the documents for him, but he started reading through it without pause, completely disengaging from the world around him.

“Well I’ll take a shower,” he said to nobody in particular.

\--

The _thing_ about his Father was his very presence had a way of draining the room of all room for error. At twenty eight, Sef was willing to admit that it wasn’t entirely his Father’s fault. He’d attained enough maturity and garnered enough personal experience to know that the dread and silence that existed in a constantly vibrating bubble around Malik was not entirely of his making. It was just that, regardless, breathing in the same space as his Father rubbed at his nerves like fine sandpaper. 

“Were you,” Sef asked when the outline had been thoroughly read and processed, “planning on staying here?” 

Malik was making notes on paper. Half his life must have consisted of making notes on paper. He’d wasted a forest of paper making notes. (But they were important, Father said. Take notes, Father said. You can’t assume you’ll remember, Father said. Notes help to remind you of what was significant, Father said.) He looked up without moving his pen away from the paper. “Unless I am unwelcome,” he said.

“There’s two empty rooms.” It wasn’t an offer; it didn’t matter what he offered here, turning Malik away wouldn’t make him leave. It would just make it harder to work with him. “If you’re planning on sleeping in one, you might want to get new linens. I had to replace mine.”

“I will go and do that,” Malik said. Then he went back to writing his notes. “You don’t have much on her childhood.”

“There isn’t much to know about it,” Sef said. He pulled the chair at the end of the table out and sat down. It was childish to do because Malik had to turn to face him and that put his hand farther away from the paper and made it harder for him to write. (Father knew, the way Sef knew, how purposeful the move was.) “Unless Mrs. Finch wrote something down, I doubt I’ll find much of anything. I’ve been through most of the old house.”

“You’re putting a lot of emphasis on the discovery of the illegitimate kids,” Malik said. Since Sef was being childish by making him turn away from the paper, his Father returned the favor by flipping his notes upside down. “That will lose a lot of impact if you don’t establish her behavior prior to the event.”

“Psychotic breaks don’t stand on their own merit anymore?” Sef asked.

“It’s not much of a break if there’s no proof she wasn’t psychotic before.”

“Most people don’t require proof for basic beliefs. For instance, I don’t need proof to know that you were a child once. I don’t need proof to know you were a normal kid, or that you probably were in the top of your class.”

Malik dropped his pen on the table. “I was _the top_ of my class.”

“Exactly. Nobody who knows you would need any proof to believe it.” Sef took a sip of his fresh made coffee (and he hadn’t brought his Father any, or even offered). 

Father wasn’t saying something and that was a refreshing change to the norm. Rather than start in on a lecture to disprove Sef’s entire theory (and he could do it, Malik could always disprove someone’s theory if you gave him enough time) he said, “the narrative would benefit from additional information about Phyllis’ childhood. You should almost mention the miscarriages that preceded the discovery of the illegitimate kids.”

“She had miscarriages?” Sef asked. “When?”

Malik picked up his notebook and his pen and tucked them under his arm. He said, “ask your Dad when you call him.” Then he grabbed the bag and went to find his room.

\--

Sef hid in the rose garden and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. There was a bench there that had worn-in-grooves from the asses of the entire family finding solace in the maze of thorns and blood-red flowers. He’d brought his phone with the intent to call his Dad but he couldn’t force himself to dial the numbers when he was still gnashing his teeth about Malik.

He might have called Jaida but she had never made much of a secret about whose side she came down on in a pinch. He might have called Darim who had always defended Malik and Altair equally, or Tazim who had spent most of their teenage years saying (on repeat): “You _have to_ stop _talking to Father_ unattended. You need a translator! Both of you! You’ve had a six day fight over fried eggs, you’re writing a _research_ paper on the culinary history of eggs.” (Sef’s response had always, _always_ been: well he was wrong.)

Even Dad would have told him he was being intentionally antagonistic. (But so was Dad.)

Sef called Desmond because he’d been putting it off; because if Dad already knew about his mission then there was no reason not to. “Hi, Uncle Desmond,” he said when the phone was picked up. “Do you have a few minutes to answer some questions about Phyllis?”

“Have you talked to your Dad about this?” Desmond asked.

“He’s my next call,” Sef confessed, “I’m working up the courage.”

Desmond was probably smiling at that; exactly how he always did over boys who didn’t want to tattle on themselves. “Let me go inside where it’s quieter, just a minute.” While he moved, Sef picked himself up to walk back toward the doghouse. He hadn’t brought a single thing to take notes with. While he walked, he asked Desmond the basics—things he already knew—about birthdays, and dates he’d visited, and who was at the old house with them. 

“I don’t remember Phyllis the way the others do,” Desmond said once Sef was settled in to record his words. “I never had the same mythological view of her that the others did. William said plenty about how she was cruel hearted. He said she was only worth her money; that she was empty inside. I saw her as a Mother, as fiercely and unflinchingly dedicated to Altair. She was always there no matter what time it was, no matter how minor what he wanted was. It was Christmas one year and he woke up in the middle of the night. He was probably four or five years old, he wanted to know where Santa was. He wanted to know if you could keep track of Santa the way people kept track of planes, he said there must be a way. So, he wanted a map. I tried to get him to go back to sleep and he said that Grandma Phyllis would have a map, that she would help him do the math. Altair woke her up, and she found him an Atlas, and she made calls. She gave him reports of the weather all over the planet so he could chart out Santa’s course.”

“Sounds like Dad,” he said.

“He had a toothache one summer and she sat with him the whole night, rocking him in the big chair in the playroom. I fell asleep listening to her telling him stories.” Desmond sighed, “she was absolute. If Altair came to her and said he’d been hurt, whatever hurt him was handled. If a boy at school was mean, that boy was removed. If a TV producer or episode director was rude to him, that person was fired. That isn’t how I would raise a child and I know that now, but to a boy who was raised to feel worthless, to have to praise his father and beg for food just to eat, who was trained to extract money from his Grandmother—Phyllis was everything I wanted. I told her about William because I believed then, and I still believe now, she was the only person that would believe me without doubt. She was the only one that would care about _me_ over the cost of what it did to the family.”

Sef had only written half of that down, and stopped scribbling to listen. It was hard to find a question to follow it up, so he floundered in the quiet. “Does it surprise you about Umar?”

“No,” Desmond said and it didn’t even sound like a betrayal. “I don’t believe she would have hurt him if the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. It’s just unfortunate that it did.”

“What did Dad do to William?” Sef asked.

“I don’t know,” Desmond answered, “I haven’t ever asked.”

“Thank you, Desmond,” Sef said. “I should call Dad.” And Desmond let him go with a ‘good luck kid’.

\--

It surprised nobody (least of all him) when he put off calling his Dad. He spent the time glaring angrily at his outline instead, trying to find the same faults with it that Malik must have found. He marinated in the anger while he made lunch and had reached a fine boil by the time Malik returned with his new linens. While any good kid might have offered help, Sef sat in the kitchen tapping his way through the old house’s official website looking for any sources they cited. Even they had almost no information about Phyllis’ childhood.

By the time Malik came downstairs again, with sweat on his face and scraped knuckles, Sef was all but steaming. 

“All settled?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Malik responded. He got himself a glass of water and set it on the table before he threw his notebook down and pulled out the chair opposite Sef. He sat in front of the mountain of documents and pulled the first sheet off the first stack. 

\--

Sef called his Dad after dark, sitting out on the front porch making a matching hat to the sweater he’d made for Jaida’s baby. He laid out his proposal without flare: he was there to do as close to a fair biography of Phyllis as possible and he would like access to Mrs. Finch’s old rooms.

“Why?” Altair asked when Sef had finally stopped talking.

“I want to understand,” Sef said because it sounded better than, ‘because it feels like I have to.’ 

Dad laughed (low and full of holes) and said, “I know it goes against everything you stand for as an individual but I would truly appreciate if you would put as much effort into understanding your Father as you do trying to understand this dead woman.” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Sef said.

Malik would say something like, ‘that is the problem’ but Altair said, “just be very careful, Sef.” Maybe he meant with Mrs. Finch’s rooms or maybe he meant with Malik, or both. “I’ll call April and tell her you’ll be opening the rooms. You’ll have to go outside tour hours and you’ll be expected to close the room when you’re finished. And nothing leaves those rooms. You can take pictures, notes, scans but nothing leaves.”

“Ok,” Sef said. “Thank you.”

Altair snorted, “you’re welcome.”

\--

Before a now waning obsession with genes, Sef had suffered a brief, catastrophic love affair with prosthetics. It had lasted a whole of six months, during which time Sef had made the usual rounds at family affairs asking their opinion on why Father had never accepted the use of a helpful prosthetic. At ten, he was more preoccupied by what a cybernetic hand _could_ be capable of and much less concerned with what his Father wanted from one. 

Dad was hopeless about it; he had funded a start-up when he’d first started dating Father (so he said) that had flourished. They produced state of the art prosthetics and they focused primarily on arms and hands. He was delighted to show it off to Sef who talked to every doctor, engineer, and technician in the place. He even got to meet a little girl who was testing out a new left arm for the team. 

He was emboldened with the knowledge of having found his place in the universe. Everything had made sense to him, at ten, as he made notes in his journal with Dad to correct his measurements and adjust his reasoning. When they’d finally gotten home and Sef had burst into his Father’s office to show him the _future_ , Father had been quiet with a strained smile and great effort. 

Father said, “I see you put a great deal of thought into those, Sef.” When he might as well have been saying, _stop wasting your time_. 

\--

Sef slept in fits and when he couldn’t take the tedium of waking up and falling asleep again, he went down to the kitchen for coffee. He wanted the solitude of the dark house to himself (and perhaps the comfortable knowledge that should his new addiction to yarn fail to soothe him, there was always the pedophile’s liquor collection) but he found Malik in the kitchen, three-fourths the way through rearranging his piles of paper. The sole reason that four out of four of Malik’s children had perfected the art form of never, ever asking for help on their homework in front of him was that Malik was incapable of half-efforts. He could not answer a question when he could teach how to _find the answer_. He could not be a guide on problem solving when he could create bigger problems like mazes.

To Malik, no problem was insurmountable and every problem was an opportunity to learn something. His quest for knowledge was beyond insatiable, and it was _exhausting_. All Sef had ever wanted from his Father was to know if two and two made four and instead he had spent years learning how to learn. (Dad, however, could always be counted on to answer any question, at any time, without the slightest hint of hesitation.) While he had some respect for his Father’s raw ability to chew through any new subject at a frankly alarming pace, he was mostly filled from head to toes with hostility at having his things disrupted (again, like always). 

“Been busy?” Sef asked. He started the coffee pot and looked at Father innocently taking notes at the table. He finished reviewing the page he was working on and dropped it into the pile nearest his elbow. That meant the piles that were moved farthest left were already assessed, catalogued and properly notated. 

“I wanted to catch up,” Father said. He leaned back into his chair and let his pen drop. “You’ve found a lot of insightful information.”

“That you moved around however you wanted.”

“I didn’t realize there was a specific organization. I divided it by dates.” Of course he had. “Altair gave me the key to Mrs. Finch’s rooms, he said that you would most likely need to get into them if you were set on completing this. We can go up there whenever you’re ready.” Look at how neatly Malik had snuck his way in, how completely he’d brought a disorganized project to order. How innocently he sat in the center of his handiwork as if he’d been invited to touch whatever he liked. “Sef,” Father said.

“Sure. Or whenever you’re ready.”

“I didn’t realize the piles were already organized,” Father repeated. “If you tell me how they were meant to be, I’ll put them back.” He had no concept, at all, that every word he said implied that there had been no logical organization to start with. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Sef said. “I’m sure this way is better anyway.” He had no interest in getting caught in another staring contest with his Father so he filled his coffee cup with every intention of leaving.

“Why are you so angry at me?” Malik asked. 

Sef laughed without thinking, caught up in a thousand reasons he was angry (at that moment, like he wasn’t twenty-eight god damn years old) and slapped his coffee mug back on the counter. “You fucked up my papers.”

“No, I didn’t.” (Because they weren’t sorted at all, and they both knew it.)

“You don’t get to decide whether you did or not! Isn’t that the same shit you’ve been peddling since we were kids? You don’t get to decide if what you did hurt someone else, you only get to decide how to deal with the consequences? I didn’t want you touching my papers!”

Father _relaxed_ into a fight and that was the reason no fight had with him was ever won. “I apologize for touching your papers. I will put them back in whatever order you would like.” It was a dare, as simple as any child’s game. Malik apologized and now Sef had to accept it or be made a liar.

They had gone in these circles all his life; Sef could feel the inevitable cyclone setting in and it was going to drag him down. There was not _winning_ these sorts of arguments ( _conversations_ , Father called them) but it felt like giving in was losing nonetheless. “Fine.”

“ _Sef_ ,” was his Father getting up to his feet, looking uncertain about what he wanted to say or do or even why he’d moved at all. The indecision hurt more than the assumption of authority; the way his Father lingered just out of reaching distance, looking old in a way he’d never looked before. Because Sef broke his family; because he wouldn’t leave well enough the fuck alone. He shoved his fist into the countertop and stared into the black-brown depth of the coffee looking for anything to say. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” Sef said rather than look at his Father. “If we’re going to see Finch’s rooms we have to do it before tours start at ten.” He left his coffee and stepped backward and turned, sliding past his Father without touching him. 

“Sef,” was his Father’s exasperation, his attempt at authority, but it was hollowed out underneath. He must have realized it because there was no command to follow it but the soft request, “I didn’t come to fight. I’m trying to fix things.”

“Well, you’re in the wrong place for that,” Sef said. He left before he could be sucked into a debate about the truth of it.

\--

They did not walk to the house together; the idea of having to walk through the gardens at a snail’s pace, constantly assaulted by his Father’s fumbling attempts at starting a conversation seemed (at best) torturous when they would were about to be wedged into the same tiny rooms. Sef stomped through the flowers, taking the long way through: turning himself in circles while his anger fermented into fine wine.

He all but jogged around a corner (because running was good for thinking, the more he thought, the faster he ran), and just barely swerved out of running face-first into Anson. The man was pulling a trolley of tools with his shirt thrown carelessly over one of his shoulders. They both shouted in surprise and Anson reached out a hand to try to catch Sef as he skidded off the path and started falling into the flowerbed. 

“Shit!” Sef shouted when he successfully pulled them both down. He landed on his back in the flower bed (crushing delicate stems, no doubt) with Anson half-sprawled over him, trying his hardest to catch his fall and succeeding in doing nothing but grabbing Sef’s chest and kneeing him in the thigh. (Although he’d take getting kneed in the thigh over the groin any day.) “Sorry,” he said immediately after.

Anson was trying to extract himself without touching too much, turning red as he fumbled and ended up sitting on his knees across Sef’s legs instead of making it to his feet. “Sorry,” was more exasperated than it should have been. His shirt was over on the path, he was trying to dust dirt off Sef’s chest while also trying to get to his feet while trying not to stare at his face too long. It tumbled down in a second fall as his balance shifted when his foot sank into the flower bed and he ended up landing back in Sef’s lap. “Sorry,” he repeated, just before he laughed at the ridiculousness of the present situation. 

The laugh was bright and honest; it invited Sef to laugh with him and he collapsed into the flowerbed in defeat and laughed along. Without them both grappling to escape, it was easier for Anson to lift himself away and reach down to pull him up. They shook the dirt off and looked guiltily at the half-destroyed flowerbed. “Sorry,” Sef said (again).

“It’s fixable,” Anson said. He stopped dusting dirt off his elbows to say, “you could have told me you owned the house.”

“I don’t own it,” Sef corrected, “I don’t even think I’m the pick to inherit it.” 

“There’s like four of you, right? Four kids?” Anson ducked down to pick up his shirt and shrug it up onto his shoulders. “I try not to wear the uniform until I have to. It’s nice to look at but it gets hot.” He was already working to close the buttons before Sef could tell him he didn’t care (personally). 

“Yes. I should go, I’m meeting my Father at the house.” He dusted off his shirt a bit more and bent down to pick up his bag that had fallen. “Nice to run into you,” he said with a grin.

Anson laughed at that, “yes.” He waved as Sef walked away, just before he started digging through the trolley (for something to fix the damaged flower bed, one assumed). 

\--

Unlike the other closed rooms of the house, Finch’s rooms had been closed upon the death of Mr. Finch and were kept locked at all times. No cleaning staff had been into the apartment since Altair swept up the crumbs and emptied the kitchen. The door creaked when they pushed it open, and the disturbed dust billowed out into the hallway in a choking gray cloud. 

They were both trying to stop coughing when Father said, “we need masks.”

“There should be some in the custodian closet,” Sef agreed.

“I’ll get the key.” He started off toward the kitchen while Sef started toward the custodian closet and they raided it for dusting rags, and trash bags, masks and gloves. Father even left a little note on the door saying that he’d been the one that was behind all the thefts. (Which was nice of him, to spare the custodians any kind of reprimand for missing supplies.)

At the doorway again, they were armed and ready, but they didn’t step across the threshold. It felt (to Sef) very much like desecrating a grave. This was the last stronghold of his Dad’s childhood, the last unasked, unanswered, unthought questions. If this woman was, like Federico thought, the keeper of the last of Phyllis’ secrets, ignorance of what lay inside was the last defense Altair had.

“What if we can’t prove she loved him?” Sef asked, like a child afraid of the boogeyman in the closet.

Malik had never had time for monsters in closets, there was nothing rational in the fear of shadows in the dark, but he said, “we can only do our best. One way or the other, it’s always better to know.” He didn’t move first but shift on his feet so Sef could and it felt like a challenge there was no backing down from.

Finch’s rooms were a small apartment with a little living and dining room smashed together, a shockingly tiny kitchen, an intimidatingly small bathroom and a microscopic bedroom. There wasn’t _space_ in the apartment to hide the sort of secrets that they were hoping to find. Sef said, “I’m going to go look in the closets in the bedroom for boxes.”

“Look under the bed as well,” Malik said. He went straight to the shelves, down the length of them to the ones closest to the big, soft chair at the end. There was a window (covered in dust) and an old lamp on a small table with a tea cup and spoon waiting to be used. 

Sef spent an hour carefully excavating pretty memory boxes from the tight crush of clothes held captive in the closet. He sorted them on either side of the bed, one half to be the things that were probably Mr. Finch’s and the other to the side that were most likely Mrs. Finch’s. Her side was stacked with boxes (twelve in all) and his had two. By the time he was finished, sweat had mixed with dust to make a glue that he peeled off with his fingernails. 

“Tours start in ten minutes,” Father announced from the doorway.

“Okay,” Sef said. He gently closed the closet door and held up his phone to snap a photograph of the boxes themselves.

Out in the living room, there were trash bags spread across the smaller chair and a stack of what must have been photo albums on the floor. Half the shelves had been dusted, the books looked at and disregarded and insignificant. Father said, “I found more pictures, one of them appears to be a wedding album, there’s one that has pictures of Phyllis and Mrs. Finch as kids—I assume. One is newspaper clippings.”

“Newspaper clippings of what?”

“Altair, mostly,” Father said. “Come on. April’s already been by once to remind me we have to be gone.”

“That’s rather bold of her,” Sef said. “Don’t you own this place?”

Father locked the door and pushed the key back into his pocket. “No. Altair is the sole owner of this property. Even if I did own it, she is paid to run it as a public venue and it would be inconsiderate to make her job more difficult for my own benefit.” He must have finally really looked at Sef because he was appalled by the dust that covered him. “You need a shower.”

“I noticed,” Sef agreed. “I’ll shower at the doghouse.”

\--

It took, what felt like, years of effort to successfully scrub the dust out of his pores. When he was finished, the hot water was completely spent and he’d used every clean washcloth in reaching distance. He took his clothes, the dirty towels and the rags and threw them all in the washer before he went looking for his Father. He’d expected to find him in the kitchen, pouring over his notes, but Malik was in Calvin’s old den. He wasn’t inspecting the liquor bottles for signs of use (like Jaida would have) but sitting in the massive leather chair, with his head tipped back and his eyes closed. There was a lonesome record playing. 

That was the feeling of the room; the thing that Sef had always almost understood when he stood here. The sensation of being held prisoner in plain view; the hopelessness that came with acceptance. Father turned his head and opened his eyes just a bit, just enough to see it was him, and then closed them again. 

“She was only eleven when she met Calvin,” Sef said. “Edward said that Calvin seduced her for her money. Who looks at an eleven-year-old like that?” 

Father opened his eyes just enough to see him, to take in and think over the question. “I imagine, when he looked at her all he saw was the money. I’ve found people are willing to do a lot just to get a little money.” He sat up a bit more, “and Phyllis had a _lot_ of money.”

“Did you look at Dad and see money?” Sef asked. “I mean, I know the story about the prom and the blog and all that. But you always knew that he came with money. You didn’t have money when you were a kid.”

“When I looked at your Dad,” Malik said, “in the beginning I saw the money. I saw how he wasted it on nothing. I hated his money; I didn’t envy it. Everything he did was so wasteful, it was so stupid. He got everything he wanted, as soon as he wanted it, because there was nobody to tell him he shouldn’t. I think, once he started to really focus on his impact in the world, as he started to mature, the money became less of another reason to hate him and more of a way to make changes in the world. You cannot look at your Dad, at me—at you, your brothers or your sister, and not see the money. It’s part of who you are and part of what you’re capable of in this world.”

They sat in the quiet, listening to the music. Sef relaxed into the old couch opposite the chair and stared at the ceiling. It felt like he was being dragged slowly, steadily _downward_ and he thought, it was no wonder Calvin had drank himself to death in this room. It seemed _inevitable_ here. (Like there was no point, at all, in trying.)

\--

Jaida called him after dark, she said, “Dad’s coming up to the old house. I was just informed I’m absorbing his appointments for the next week.” 

“Good,” Sef said, sitting on his bed, trying to figure out the weak spots in his outline without giving in and asking his Father. “Maybe he can keep Father busy so I can get work done.”

There was no such thing as a friendly silence with Jaida, she held her tongue only when she was contemplating violence. After a pause, she said, “I understand that you’re upset with Father. I do understand that because I’m also upset with his choices recently, but unless he’s developed dementia between the time he left here and the time he arrived there, I do not believe for a second that he is impairing you in any way. This is what Father does, Sef. This is literally his life’s passion: research, analysis and conclusion. He’s not in your way.”

“I didn’t ask for his help,” Sef said.

“You’d be stupid to turn it down. Which you are. You’re stupid in exactly the same way he is. Just,” she said and stalled out, “just try, Sef? Just _try_ to assume that he’s not there to make your life difficult.”

There was no telling Jaida that Altair was a genius, a billionaire, an amazing athlete (still), an accomplished artist, and a leader in every industry he’d ever stuck his nose into and it still felt like less of a challenge to measure himself up to the man that it did to try to compare his meager efforts to the sheer force of Father’s expectations. Instead, he said, “he could have asked instead of assuming,” and, “I’ll make an effort.”

“Do it for your overscheduled, overly pregnant sister,” Jaida said. They made small talk about how they were both doing well, about how the baby was growing and how medical talk annoyed Jaida but being talked down to in layman’s terms annoyed her more. (But it was nice, for a change, to find something that Jaida couldn’t simply absorb by being near it.) When they were finished, Jaida said, “take care of them, please. I want them both back before this kid is born.”

Sef said, “I’ll do my best,” when he’d already done his very best to make the disaster in the first place.

\--

Dad was standing in the kitchen when Sef dragged himself downstairs for coffee. He had the distinct rumpled look of someone who had been stuck in a car for far too long. His shirt had buttons (a rare occasion for a day off) and wrinkles, he was holding a cup (of water, or milk, or juice, or anything but coffee). “Good morning, son,” he said without looking over in his direction. He didn’t move away from reviewing the whole of the timeline until he’d properly had the time to read it all. “That’s a lot,” he said when he’d finished.

“It’s still incomplete.”

Dad pulled a chair covered in boxes ever so slightly farther out away from the table and waved his hand at it. “The original Walters and Ferdinand kept very detailed records. That’s not surprising if you’d ever met Walters; he was the sort of man that probably wrote down everything. When they retired, I received the ledgers.”

“Did you read them?” Sef asked.

Dad deliberated on the answer, like weighing out the pros and cons of admitting the truth. He said, “I read some of it. For obvious reasons, I would prefer you didn’t reveal any unnecessary, unsavory details about members of our family that are still living without their permission.” 

Sef nodded. “Ok. How many Walters and Ferdinands are there?”

“I believe the third generation Walters and Ferdinand just started this year.” He cleared his throat and tapped his finger against the box on the top, “this one is a few things that I kept from my Grandmother’s estate when she passed away. There are a few things that related to Phyllis, many things that relate to my Mother.”

“Oh,” Sef said. “Thanks.” It seemed polite to not immediately tear into the boxes and start dissecting them for valuable information. Instead, he poured his coffee and looked through the cabinets for something he could eat for breakfast. “Did you want to go with us to see Finch’s rooms?”

Dad picked up a box of donuts that he’d dropped on the table and handed them over to him. “Just eat the chocolate ones before your Father gets down here.” It was a smiling nod to their childhood and Father’s objection to chocolate-for-breakfast. (Vanilla, strawberry, maple, raspberry and half a dozen other flavors were all acceptable. It was only chocolate that wasn’t.) “I don’t think I’ll join you today,” he added. “Which room is your Father in?”

“Uh, Edward’s.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Dad said then. Because the alternative was to sleep in Calvin’s room. “Try to be quiet when you leave.” Then he excused himself.

\--

“Why is he sleeping on the couch?” Father asked, very suddenly, three-fourths of the way to the old house. “There are beds.” It wasn’t possible to join the conversation so Sef didn’t try. “I would have let him sleep in the bed. He could have used your bed. The couch is terrible for his back—why is he sleeping on it?” The pause there made men less familiar with Malik think they were being invited to answer. “Did he say anything?”

“About?” Sef asked.

Father growled under his breath. “Of course he did not.” Then Father stopped talking (to himself, to Sef, to the early morning staff preparing for the day). They went through the hallways silently, unlocked the door to Finch’s room and went back to where they’d started the day before all without saying a word.

Sef took a chair from the dining room and unpacked the first of the twelve boxes. It was full of delicate things, old letters and newspaper clippings. There were pressed flowers on crinkled paper and polished stones-and-coins in the bottom of the box. The letters were to-and-from Mr. Finch back before he’d made an honest woman of her. They were full of love stories, of future hopes (that never came to pass), and sturdy sentiments. Mr. Finch promised fidelity, loyalty and companionship. He professed a fondness for Mrs. Finch that surpassed all his other interests. Mrs. Finch lavished him with praise and promised him warm food, and comfort, and undying love. 

He was half through them before he found the first mention of Phyllis. _I’ve been given a place in the house,_ Mrs. Finch wrote, _I had to speak to Phyllis about it directly because there was some effort by that vile man to prevent me from taking over my Mother’s place. I thought she might side against me on his behalf, but she laughed off any notion I had of prejudice and told me not to be so dramatic. I held my tongue because there is no hope. I have never seen a girl more obsessed with such an obvious fantasy. She insists that he loves her. God forgive me, but I hope for the day her vision clears and she can see the man for what he is._ The letter was brittle and thin, almost a full hundred years old. 

There were a dozen more just like it, breaks in the prose where Mrs. Finch paused to compare Calvin to a variety of animals (her favorite, most consistently, being a weasel). Every time, she spoke of how she hoped, and she prayed for Phyllis to finally see the man for what he was before it was too late. 

And that, like Finch’s hopes for children and a home of her own, had not happened.

\--

Father read the scans of the letters out on the porch, as any adult who was avoiding another adult in the same house might have. Sef was inside, scribbling the new insights into the calendar of events (adding Finch’s wedding date to the timeline). The longer he looked at it, the more he thought about it, the more it became _obvious_ there was a gaping hole of time in the timeline.

Calvin met Phyllis when she was eleven, and Phyllis built the prison Sef was standing when she was thirty-five. It all started unravelling in 1964, when William showed up at the old house as the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was nothing in the space between, no record but a wedding date of what Calvin did in all that time.

(You need more about her childhood, Father had said.)

Sef wanted a drink more than he wanted anything. There was no space left to think when the whole doghouse was taken up by his fathers and the hostile-and-quiet places he’d made between them. He wanted a drink, but settled for a nap upstairs-and-away from Altair on the couch and Malik on the porch.

\--

“—most amazing part is that you _believe_ yourself!” came like thunder, a sudden explosive sound that cracked apart all of Sef’s dreams. It sounded like (but couldn’t have been) Dad’s voice. Sef jerked upright in bed, stumbled half-out, and into the hallway to hear, “you’ve constructed the entire world around your singular point of view and anything that doesn’t fall in line with what you think must be true is disregarded. I _know_ how I feel, Malik and _why_ ,” was almost defeat as Sef’s feet touched the first floor of the house and he was watching his parents stare one another down in the living room. Dad was shaking his head and Father was staring at him without moving, every part of his body vibrating while staying still.

Father looked over at him, with just his eyes, flicking sideways and that made Dad turn to look at him. They were altogether too old for Sef to feel like crying over his parent’s having a fight but, just then, crying felt like the only good reaction. 

“You should go,” Father said, to Altair who was clenching his teeth to keep from saying anything. 

“Fine,” Dad said and he left the house like a hurricane. When he was gone, the silence settled into a suffocating blanket. Father licked his lips and pushed his hand through his hair, trying to piece together enough decorum and resolve to bring himself to explain what had been witnessed. 

“What happened?” Sef asked.

“We had a disagreement about the nature of our estrangement,” Malik said with absolute civility. He shook his head and looked out toward the door, “excuse me,” he said, “I just need to calm down.” He went out, but not away, just out to sit on the porch.

\--

Sef reworked his outline, and printed copies of Finch’s letters to add to the piles. He sat in the kitchen under the oppressive weight of things he’d only half-heard until it became unbearable. When he thought he’d break apart at all the joints, he went to the den to sit in the big chair and listen to the hopeless music. There was a decanter of something brown (some kind of scotch, maybe) within reaching distance and he grit his teeth and ran his fingertips across the corners of it. He absently lifted and dropped the stopper, letting the smell of the liquor mix with the music and the leather and the old-old cigars. 

\--

Dad was at the old house, making April furious by sitting at Phyllis’ desk in plain view of the tour-goers. Sef smiled at the gawking middle-aged woman who was going to protest his blatant disregard for the rules. The docent said, “this is the owner of the house,” with a hand wave to Altair at the desk, “and one of his sons.” 

If people were impressed with the notion of money that the house provided, they were even more impressed with the people who possessed it. There was whispers and gawky stage whispers muttering how neither of them looked like billionaires. (One of them, namely Sef, was not one.) 

When the tour had moved on, Sef stood opposite the massive desk, looking down at his Dad looking up at him with abrasive disinterest. “I don’t know where Father went.” He spread his hands and let them drop again. “He’s just gone.”

“He’ll show up,” Dad said with no effort. “You should go.”

“If you don’t want me to wri—”

“Sef,” cut him off at the start, “just, please go.”

\--

Property damage was much, much more Tazim’s style. In a family full of dramatics, (like Peyton who had spent every minute after she turned thirteen trying to be sure her parents knew she was a real-live-rebel), Sef had never seen much point in trying to be the loudest in the room. Jaida could scream louder, Tazim could fight longer, Darim could hit harder, and Malik could give a cold shoulder so effective it could have reversed global warming. 

Sef preferred moderation.

That must have been why he’d taken two steps past a shovel out on the patio behind the ballroom, stopped short on his way to the doghouse (and the liquor hiding therein) and stuttered in step. There was no definable thought, no conscious choice to grab the shovel and yet, there was smashing the wide-wide windows of the ballroom. He’d learned softball-and-baseball-and-tennis as a child. He’d learned parkour as a toddler, taken up rock climbing in grade school, spent half his life keeping up with two brothers and a Dad that never quit. He knew how to swing, he knew where to apply force.

The glass shattered in thousands of pieces. The wood splintered on impact. The curtains tore where they caught the sharp edge of the shovel. He took three steps forward and swung again. It shattered more glass, threw it inward across the polished floor. 

“Hey!” sounded a bit like Anson the shirtless flower keeper. “Hey!” was louder, closer, more urgent. 

Sef shattered the door, laughed as the glass exploded. It was _hysterical_ just then. It was _hilarious_. This stupid house had stood against the weather, and _time_ and a dozen or two dozen stupid cousins and not even one of them had ever had the balls to attack it. He managed to smash the other door before Anson grabbed the shovel under the blade and held it back, Sef jerked it out of his hands but they were left staring at one another. There was blood on his hands (probably from the glass shards) and sweat (maybe tears) all over his face. He hefted the shovel so it was over his shoulder. “Yes?” he asked.

“That glass is almost two hundred years old,” Anson said like it _mattered_. 

“Then it was time to replace it,” he said back. His voice seemed watery, thin and stretched. It sounded like it was pouring out of his mouth and now that he’d stopped for a second, his whole body seemed to be shivering inside its skin. “You should move,” he said like he was someone that didn’t care. 

Anson scrambled sideways just before Sef swung the shovel again. He made it three more-windows-down before April screamed, “What are you doing?” at the top of her lungs from inside. She was wearing heels with pointed toes, staring at him from the other side of a lake of glass. “I’m calling the cops!”

“Please do!” Sef screamed back at her. He smashed another window to add emphasis to his point and April screamed back at him from inside. “Call all the fucking cops,” he hissed, to himself, to the shovel, to the windows that were still unbroken. He hoisted the shovel again, shifting on his feet to get the most momentum in the swing—thinking he could probably break the frame of the window if he hit it right. (And what a glorious sound that wood would make when it cracked. Like a hundred years of history crying out under the assault before it snapped to splinters.) 

“Stop!” Anson shouted from behind him. “Come on, I don’t know what happened bu—”

The metal blade shattered the window panes, it cut a slice through the wood and got stuck. Sef yanked on it but it held fast, sticking straight out from the house. No amount of pulling loosened it, but the effort made his palms go slick with sweat (and blood). He was caught up in the pointlessness of it, yanking and yanking on it as the wood creaked and his shoes bit across the broken glass. 

He didn’t hear Altair until he was close enough to reach through the windows. “Push on it, you’re only wedging it in deeper this way.”

Sef jerked backward. His whole face was dripping sweat and he was breathing hard. The disaster of broken glass was glittering in the sunlight and there was Altair, grabbing the handle of the shovel with one hand and shoving it counter to how Sef had pulled it. The blade slid free with a thunderous crack that split the wood straight up and down again. 

“Anson?” Altair said with the shovel extended outward. “If you would.” Altair regarded the broken windows, “some of the glass was original to the house, Sef.” 

That was funny, funnier to hear Altair say it than when Anson tried. Funnier to be standing outside the chaotic spray of little bits of glass, to watch Altair step across the great lake of it on the inside. It was _fucking_ hilarious to watch his Dad step out through the doors without bothering to open them. Sef had emptied the frames so completely there was nothing stopping him. Oh, Sef was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe and Dad was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking (for all the world) like he’d been mildly inconvenienced. Sef was still shouting, “ha! Ha! Ha!” like a braying donkey when he surged forward to shove the flats of his hands against Altair’s chest. His palms left pink smears on his perfectly white shirt. “Don’t you ever get mad?” he screamed, “I broke your family!” he pulled back to surge forward and shove Altair again. He hit him hard enough that Altair rocked back a step. 

“Please stop,” Dad said (very quietly). 

“I destroyed your Grandmother! I took your family away! I broke them, I made you a child abuser, I—” He shoved Altair again, and again, in time with the words and he would have shoved him one more time but just before he could get his hands on Altair, the man moved. It was quick, subtle, the way he moved. Sef fell into the space where his Dad should have been, and was dragged back up by an arm around his throat.

Altair said, “I’m going to let you go,” which was hard to hear through the rush of blood in his ears and the stunning, sharp realization that his own Dad had him in a choke hold. That he was holding him with minimal effort, speaking so evenly he might as well been ordering wine. “When I do, you will stop pushing me.” 

Sef pulled at Altair’s shirt, scratching his nails across the fabric and found no purchase. He remembered something about elbows and good places to land blows but he’d never been much for fighting. (Not the way Jaida and Darim had been.) His vision was going gray at the edges. 

He’d studied all sorts of brain phenomenon as a doctor; he’d been part of a study group that loved to shit talk philosophy and fucked basically every guy that argued there was no God and the distortion of time and the presence of ‘lights’ and ‘tunnels’ were all products of the dying brain. Truly, the human body was a miracle (of evolution, of science, not of God). It was a strange time to be thinking of it, those talks from long-long ago, but there he was, trying to reason out how long it had really been since Altair’s arm went around his neck. How much more time he had before he passed out. (And how his Dad knew exactly how to do this, how still his body was even as Sef wriggled and squirmed and scratched.) 

He thought of Jaida, angry-as-ever saying, _he’s a fucking psychopath_ as if it were obvious. As if everyone had always known. And he thought of faithful Uncle Desmond so easily accepting his Dad (who had never even been angry, the whole of his life) could have hurt him. 

That was funny, in those few gray milliseconds, how Sef hadn’t ever seen this coming. That was really, fucking funny.

Altair pushed him forward and away. By the time Sef had turned around, Altair’s hands were back in his pockets. “I don’t appreciate your rash behavior, Sef.”

“I don’t appreciate being choked!” Sef meant to shout, but it came out between coughs and gasps of breath. His head felt full of things, thinky-things and cotton-things.

Altair smiled, and there was nothing remotely comforting in it. He smiled the way Phyllis smiled in photographs, as if someone had pulled a string in his back and made him do it. “I didn’t think you would enjoy it.” ( _That’s why I did it_.)

“I’m your son!”

“I don’t believe you are,” Altair answered. “I did not raise a sullen, whiny _child_. My children,” he said as he took a step forward, “understand the basic concept of respect. They understand the value of family, of property, of integrity.”

Sef took a step back and his shoe slid across the patio bricks. He stumbled in his effort to retreat; and that made Altair stop. It shattered the moment like the glass on the patio. He saw the moment it broke, how it started in his Dad’s face and dropped through his whole body. It made his step falter and his wooden smile slipped away. 

Altair looked at the glass and then at Sef; he was _exhausted_. “I’m sorry, Sef.” He cleared his throat and motioned out toward the garden, “you should go. I’ll take care of—this.”

“Phyllis was a monster,” Sef said.

“I know.” Altair did not even manage to look ashamed of himself about it, “and I am a monster’s son. Please go.”

\--

Sef hit the door of the doghouse jogging, he burst through the door and only just managed to slam it shut behind him in his haste. He was still running when he got to the stairs, all the way up with his breath and his heart beating like drums. 

“What happened?” was Father right after him, rushing up the stairs and hitting the bedroom door that Sef meant to shut. “You’re bleeding.”

“Dad choked me!” Sef screamed at him.

“What?”

“I—I broke all the windows in the ballroom and he didn’t even _care_. It didn’t even bother him!” Sef grabbed the clothes he’d bought out of the dresser and threw them on his bed. He had some memory of luggage but it could have been a memory of another place. He was trying to reason through some kind of bag, some kind of plan, arrive at some kind of resolution and he couldn’t hold onto a single thought.

“Altair choked you?” Malik repeated. “Sef!”

“What?” he shouted back.

Malik was all logic, supremely still in the chaos of Sef’s vision. His palm was raised in surrender, and his voice was modulated to make it through the ears of hysterical boys. “You broke the windows in the ballroom. Was that how you cut your hands?”

“Yes.”

“Why did Altair choke you?” Malik asked.

Sef was crying and he couldn’t remember when he started, “uh, I—I was shouting things at him, I was shoving him, he was just _standing there_. Then he wasn’t, then he had me in a choke hold and I called him a monster. What the fuck is wrong with me?” Malik hugged him and Sef wrapped both his arms around him and shoved his face against his Father’s shoulder. He was sobbing like a stupid child. “I’m sorry,” Sef said with his snot all over his Father’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”

\--

Malik made him sit on the tub in the bathroom while he inspected the wounds on Sef’s hands. Anyone looking in might have thought Malik was the doctor for the way he fussed with such precision over the little wounds. “Tell me what happened,” Malik said, the way he always had.

“I fucked up,” Sef whispered.

“Yes,” Malik agreed. “You come by it honestly. Both of your fathers are fuck ups.”

Sef laughed with him, just a bit. “Did Dad really almost kill Leonardo?”

No part of him was ready to see the misery on Malik’s face as he nodded his head. “Yes.” He moved so they were sitting side by side on the edge of the tub, both looking at the floor mats like they held the secrets of the world. “Leonardo instigated the fight but I don’t think he understood what he was doing. That scar on your Dad’s back? It’s from that fight. Leonardo kicked him into a glass table and it broke.”

“Did Dad kill William the way Phyllis killed Umar?” Sef asked.

Malik was picking at lint on his pants, “I don’t know.” (Because I never asked.)

Sef snorted a laugh, “this is stupid. This man used to wake us up with balloons on our birthday. He dressed up as cartoon characters on Halloween. He held four separate princess tea parties for Jaida in one year, and he dressed up with her every time. The closest I’ve ever seen him to angry is when the two of you argue about whatever bullshit you’re always arguing about.” 

“You used to put lunch meat on your head and run around the house with your pants off. You thought it was hilarious,” Malik bumped his elbow into Sef’s ribs, “look at you now. You’re fresh out of rehab, half the way through a great attempt to research your way out of guilt, trying to make everyone around you hate you as much as you hate yourself. If it weren’t so hard to watch, I’d be more impressed.”

“I’m sure if it was you, you’d have succeeded by now,” Sef said. He expected Malik to roll his eyes and found his Father staring at the rug instead. He shrugged his shoulders without committing to an answer.

“Nobody hates you,” Father said with unwavering finality. He looked back at Sef, meeting his stare and holding it until he was sure those words were understood. “Come on, we have to go find your Dad.” He stood up and held out his hand for Sef to take.

\--

Dad was in the ballroom with the big broom, a giant gray trashcan and a pile of glass he’d pushed to the center of the room. The fading sunlight was still streaming in through the empty window frames. He looked up from where he’d been crouching with the dustpan, trying to fill it with the shards. “I’m sorry,” Altair said to him, to _Father_. His face was pink-spotted and his voice was raw from the effort. “I didn’t even mean to, I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Father said. 

That did nothing but make Altair’s whole face go pink and he looked at Sef, “I’m sorry.”

There they were: standing in the wreckage that Sef had made of his family. It was exactly what he’d convinced himself would happen when he found that stupid file three-almost-four years ago. It was what he didn’t get in his Dad’s office when he spit out those hateful words, what he couldn’t find in rehab that filled his head with quotes about forgiveness. This was what he’d been trying to find as he sorted through Phyllis’ history, this _proof_ that he’d destroyed his life for _something_. (They were all monsters, one after another, Phyllis, Altair, and him.) “Dad,” didn’t cover what he wanted to say. “I’m sorry. I—I was selfish. I fucked up.” Nobody moved so he stumbled on with a, “can I help? Do we have boards somewhere? More dust pans?”

Malik did move then, across the floor heedless of the sparkle of glass, and he wrapped his hand around Altair’s arm and pulled him so he was standing. It wasn’t unusual for his parents to touch; they had been an embarrassingly touchy sort of parents, always holding hands and hugging and kissing one another in full view of everyone. They had been a nightmare at public engagements when being cool depended on your parents not being embarrassing. It was just that, the way Malik wrapped his arm around Altair had nothing to do with affection. No, that was Father at his fiercest, when he used his whole body like a shelter against the world. He’d hugged them all that way, Jaida to Tazim, at one time or another. 

He couldn’t just _watch_ so Sef made himself busy with a dustpan, scooping the shattered glass as best he could and dumping it into the big gray trash bin. He’d done it once, then twice, and almost three times before Dad came back with wet eyes and quiet resolve. “Malik,” Dad said.

“I’ll call the groundskeeper about the windows,” Malik said. He was already pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll find someone to do the restoration work in the morning.” 

“Thank you,” Altair said.


	3. Chapter 3

Sef woke up with a hell of a hangover: head throbbing, body aching, and mouth full of foul tasting fuzz. He rolled over expecting to find the now familiar decor of the doghouse guest room and found himself staring at an elegant ceiling instead. He was in his room at the old house, tucked into the blankets he’d picked out when he was fifteen, sleeping soundly on the mattress they’d bought twenty years ago (and used once or twice a year since then). 

There had been no real consensus not to make the long walk back to the doghouse the night before, just the general drifting of bodies toward the stairs. Father had pulled Dad into a bathroom with bright lights to clean all the little cuts and scrapes on his hands with all the same diligence he’d used on Sef. He’d gone to sit on his bed while he waited for them to finish, intent on retreating back to the doghouse in just a minute, and there was waking up to the bright-bright light of day.

Sef found his parents in the big kitchen. Father was sitting at the table, taking notes about restoration companies while Dad drank his morning cup of juice. There was coffee in a to-go cup from the closest convenience store (a good fifteen minutes away assuming no traffic) sitting on the counter waiting for him. He plucked it out of the carrier and brought it over to sit at the table. 

Altair pushed a paper-wrapped breakfast sandwich (surely something greasy and unappetizing) at him while he sipped his drink. His hands were dotted with scabs and blood spots. He hadn’t changed his shirt so the pink marks from Sef’s palms were still spread across his chest. “Just, eat your breakfast before you start overthinking things,” Dad said. He made a noise in his throat like exasperation. “He’s your clone,” was addressed to Malik.

“I’m aware,” Father answered. 

“I thought you refused to do paternity tests on principle,” Sef said. He sipped his coffee (bland but divinely hot) and ripped through the sticker seal on the sandwich. It was something that purported itself to be egg and cheese and sausage. The eggs were flat yellow square that had the consistency of play food and sausage was speckled and dimpled so deeply in spots that it was almost see through. He ate it anyway because Dad was watching him like daring him to decline.

“We refused to tell you the results of the paternity test on principle,” Malik corrected. He looked up from his research long enough to grimace at the sandwich that Sef was eating. (His parents had a lifelong war about who could be more selective on what they ate, always caught in the effort of outdoing the other.) “It was our feeling at the time that you did not want to know out of any genuine curiosity but because you were looking for excuses to exclude one another from a group--is that egg?”

“It says it is,” Sef managed around a mouthful. 

“Let him eat,” Dad said. 

“Right,” Father said (but didn’t believe it). “We felt that it would cause a divide between you three boys, at the time you were very set on the notion that only a biological child could inherit your Dad’s wealth and use his name to their benefit. It didn’t seem wise to add fuel to that fire.”

“That was when we were kids. I think most of us know now that Jaida’s taking over.” He dropped the half of the sandwich he couldn’t force himself to eat and Father tried very hard not to look relieved. 

Dad sighed. “Except Darim.”

Sef took a drink of coffee to that thought. His poor brother, trudging along through getting a masters degree in a field he had no interest in under the misconception that he had to take over a business he didn’t want. “He’ll get there,” Sef said. “So, what were the paternity results? We all know Jaida is Father’s daughter. What about us?”

Father looked at Dad who shrugged like he didn’t care, and then Dad said, “you and Darim are my biological children. Tazim is Malik’s. Despite that, you are your Father’s clone.”

That was a riot (as they used to say); it was almost impossible to imagine his methodical Father behaving irrationally. Watching him across the table neatly arranging the options to fix the disaster Sef made, looking no worse for the wear, as if he could just decide that the past three (almost four) years had simply not happened, it seemed impossible to imagine they were anything alike. “Father wouldn’t have--” He motioned at the whole house, at his parents, at the general feeling of being bruised. “This.”

Dad looked sideways at Father who met his stare with his hand held up and his fingers spread out indicating that Sef was exhibit number one in his argument. Dad was all disbelief when he looked at him, shifting how he was leaning against the back of the chair he was sitting, so he was leaning forward toward Sef. “Son. It might feel like you’re a champion of self destruction, but you’re a great deal short of being the trophy holder in this family.”

Father said, “this company has the most consistent positive reviews doing work most closely related to your needs,” as he handed a slip of paper to Dad. That seemed to be some kind of cue for Altair to leave because he took the slip, picked up his phone and left his juice on the table. He went behind Sef toward the front of the house and ruffled his hand up in Sef’s hair as he passed. 

It was only him and Father, looking at one another. 

“You?” Sef said. “You, the champion of self-esteem, the most exhaustingly accomplished person I’ve ever met, you’re the trophy holder of self-destruction?” He didn’t mean for it to sound so unbelievable. “About your arm? About getting a 98 on a test once?”

“When I was a young man, I found out a lot of things about my Mother that I never thought were possible. I thought she was perfect. I had no concept that beneath her calm, beneath her acceptance, beneath her tireless effort, she was a person who had her own internal life, and her own history before I became a part of it.” There was his Father working up to a lecture, getting philosophical with an sharp edge in it. “It has been my effort, as your Father, to give you the tools that I wish I’d had when I was a child. I had luxuries that my Mother did not. I never had to work if I didn’t want to. I never had to worry about food, or clothing, or time. I didn’t go to bed exhausted, wondering if I’d have the money for the rent. I never had to console my sons for being mocked about their faded clothes. I didn’t have to raise you to be strong in the face of ugliness, prejudice, and poverty. I was never alone.” 

“Definitely not that,” Sef agreed, “I mean, there was always some adult around, you, Dad, Lucy, Desmond--Kadar.”

Father nodded. “If you wanted to know, for the sake of understanding, I would tell you. I’m only hesitant because your recent behavior, your repeated attacks against your Dad, this effort you’re making to prove to yourself that what you feel about yourself is a true reflection of what others feel about you. I recognize this pattern; I have no desire to have my past thrown at me when it’s convenient for you.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Sef said.

“You can’t accidentally smash every window with a shovel, Sef.” 

No. You couldn’t; but it hadn’t felt like he had much choice in the matter either. It had seemed like the only possible thing he could have done. “I wasn’t _aware_ that I was trying to hurt Dad. It didn’t feel like I was intentionally doing anything like it. I thought I was trying to make it better for him; but yesterday. I just--I wanted him to be angry. I’ve been angry at him ever since I told him; I ruined my life to protect him and he doesn’t even care.”

“It would be a mistake to assume that he doesn’t care,” Father said.

“If I found out someone killed you, or him, that they had let you die the way she let Umar die? I couldn’t imagine what I’d do.” But he’d tried to imagine it; to think through how he could cope with such an ugly thing. “And I come back, I find out that it doesn’t even matter. That I ruined everything for what feels like, no reason. Along the way I also broke up my parents and made the whole family hate Dad for something he didn’t even do.”

“You can’t force him to feel how you think he should feel.” That sounded like it was the summation of a lifetime of study. Father was looking at nothing in particular when he said it, like walking backward through his own memory of things. “You have to accept that because of things that are beyond your control; you may never get to see how he feels about this. Altair has put _so much_ effort into protecting his children from the legacy he inherited. Nobody hated him.”

“Just, they thought he’d finally became the out of control, violent child abuser you always thought he’d be?”

Father was _trying_ , all the obvious signs of effort where there. His narrow eyes, his curled fingers, his clenched teeth. There were so many things he didn’t want to say (or so many fights he didn’t want to start). “Sef,” was very gentle, and very calm, “there is simply too many things you do not know about Altair. The fact that you have no concept of these missing things is proof that he succeeded in protecting you from them. Don’t make assumptions about things you have no way of understanding. It makes you look like a jackass.” 

That was a refreshingly direct, honest answer from his Father. Sef took a drink of coffee. “Apparently, I don’t know either of my parents like I thought I did,” it was scary to say, to think, he was twenty eight and an idiot. “I want to know,” Sef said (at last), “whatever you feel safe telling me. I want to understand.”

Father looked very sad, and almost trapped. He said, “it’s not a very nice story,” as a disclaimer before he started talking.

\--

There was probably a polite way to excuse oneself from the depth of unhappy things they had not considered to be hidden in another human being. (Kadar would have known how to do it; how to tactfully retreat from a situation he didn’t realize he was unprepared for.) Sef had sat in the silence at the end of his Father’s story and said, “I need a nap,” because he was exhausted (just listening to it) and because he wanted to be away from _here_.

“Altair closed the house for the day, you can sleep in your room if you like.” Father didn’t seem surprised by the response, or disappointed. He got up when Sef did, most likely to go and find Dad. All the space that had been insurmountable between them before had contracted in the wake of the fantastic disaster of the day before. 

(And if Sef had only known that all it took was getting put in a choke hold by his Dad he might have shattered the windows weeks ago.) 

“Father,” Sef said when Malik was all the way to the doorway. He didn’t know how to say any of the things he wanted to say, about all those things he didn’t know about his parents before now. It was cheating to hug him, but he wrapped his arms around his Father and squeezed him. Father hugged him back, smiled at him when they pulled apart. “Is Dad going to be okay?”

“It’ll take time,” Father said. “You should finish the biography. I’ll help or I won’t, whichever you need.”

“I could use help,” Sef said.

Father smiled again, “go nap, you look like shit.”

Sef had expected that he would end up anywhere but back in bed. He thought he’d wander his way down to Finch’s apartment and sort through those boxes. He thought he’d go back to the doghouse, to his papers and his half-finished paragraphs. But he went back to bed, full of heavy thoughts. 

\--

The old house was largely ornamental. It served as a beautiful backdrop for wedding photos and offered enough elegance that anyone searching for the illusion of old-old wealth could rent out a room and host some manner of engagement. They simply had to settle for limited working bathrooms, long hallways that led to locked rooms and a kitchen that could be operated by no less than a full gourmet catering staff. 

In short, whenever his family came for family reunions and short visits, they relied entirely on take out and cold cut sandwiches. Sef dragged himself out of bed to the smell of Italian food and followed the scent of garlic and tomato all the way down to the kitchen. His parents were both eating, with a tray of might have been manicotti (before they destroyed it) and a spread of garlic bread sitting on the table. They’d put out a third plate but it was obviously viewed as optional since Dad was putting his fork on his now-empty plate and licking sauce off his thumb.

Father was not sharing whatever he was reading (gleefully, as only old men could truly enjoy anything) despite how Dad was trying to get it out of his hand. 

“You haven’t even eaten, give me the damn tablet. Malik.” It was easy, common bickering. (A sign, like a bit of green after a disaster, that things would be better.) Dad glowered (but playfully) while Father tucked the tablet behind his back and made a show of picking up his fork. 

“Can I join?” Sef asked. 

Dad was side-eying Father when he said, “of course.” When he finally managed to look away from him, he still seemed to be watching for his chance to lean over and take the tablet. (And these were old men, about to be grandfathers, acting like children.) “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” Sef said. He made himself a plate. “What did the men say about the windows?”

“Something about money,” Dad said. He tore his attention away from Malik long enough to really look at Sef. “I need you to occupy your Father because he is being childish.” It should have been _amazing_ how quickly the two of them had fallen back into place (side by side). 

Father was chewing his food with quiet precision, not stooping to sticking his tongue out. He even waited until he had swallowed before he said, “it would be a good idea to sort through more of the boxes in Mrs. Finch’s room while the house is closed to tours. If you’re feeling up to it.”

Sef nodded, “yeah.” He looked at Dad, “what are you going to do?”

“Take a bath,” Dad said. “Read the newspaper,” he turned back to glowering at Father with the same mock sternness. 

Sef pulled his phone out of his pocket with his left hand and snapped a picture of them staring one another down, caught the wrinkled little smiles at the edges of their lips that they couldn’t quite tamp down. He ignored them (for the best when they were high on the joy of liking one another again) and sent the picture to Jaida with the caption, _look what I did_.

It took her fifteen minutes before she sent back, _you know it’s true love when it’s that embarrassing_. And another ten after before, _I can’t wait for the story of how you managed it. I’m sure it’s fantastic._

\--

Time and trespassers hadn’t eased the smoggy thickness of the air in Finch’s apartment. Father opened a window in by the large chair, careful not to disrupt the little tea cup, and went back to the smaller chair covered up in trash bags. He picked up the album he’d been looking at and flipped it open to the page he’d been on when they had to leave the day before. 

Sef stood in the center of the room, wearing the mask to make breathing (harder) less toxic, looking at the years and years of dust piled on everything. He said, “did you meet Mrs. Finch?”

“Yes,” Father said, “many times.”

“She grew up in this house?” Sef asked. He had heard it before, the way anyone heard stories of long-ago-days. It hadn’t ever _mattered_ to him directly, the stories of a woman that died long before he was even born. Phyllis had only mattered because they had been bystanders of their Dad’s yearly trip to visit her grave. 

Father looked up from the album and nodded. “Her Mother ran the kitchen before her; she was born in this house. I don’t believe she was born here in these rooms, but she was born in the house. She grew up here, she worked here, and even though Altair tried to convince her to leave, she stayed here until she died.”

“She never had kids?” Sef asked.

“No.”

He looked at the shelves, at the dusty shapes of little porcelain figures and the unreadable spines of books. There shouldn’t have been enough space in the apartment to keep a whole lifetime and yet, everything was neatly stacked to fit into every inch of space. “She was also Dad’s nanny?”

“Sometimes,” Father agreed. “I believe he had other nannys but none of them lasted very long because Phyllis had very strict rules about what they were allowed to do and what they were expected to accomplish. Mrs. Finch was probably more like his aunt.”

“I was reading letters yesterday, she seems to be very concerned about Phyllis. She spends a long time talking about how much she hates Calvin, and how he is despicable. But, even when Phyllis was seventeen, eighteen when she wrote these letters, she says that she can’t wait for the day that Phyllis sees him for what he is.” Sef looked at Father; Father looked back at him. Neither of them were announcing any conclusion to the evidence. 

“As I understood it, Phyllis was very well known for having absolute will power. It was probably what kept her from seeing the obvious so long.”

Sef sighed. “I’ve got boxes,” he said and motioned toward the little room. He went down the narrow hallway, back to his chair and the portable scanner that he’d been using to copy the documents the day before. The box he’d finished was sitting on the floor, the one he intended to look through next was pulled over and waiting. 

\--

As far as Sef could tell, Finch had not kept diaries; while she seemed fond of letter writing, those letters (pages and pages in length) were limited to the ones she sent to her future husband, and one or two that she’d gotten from extended relatives talking about how lovely it must be to have such a prestigious place of employment.

Some of the boxes were full of children’s things, painstakingly drawn pictures (of houses, and flowers and boats on water). Mrs. Finch had taken the trouble of writing the name of the child and the date they were made on the upper back corner. He was familiar with but not an expert in child development but it didn’t take any manner of expert to understand the difference between Edward’s sullen, bleak crayon work and Ezio’s cheerful sunny fingerpainting. 

One of the boxes was full of recipes that were written on old, old cards with soft edges and smeared oil stains. One of them was full of old ribbons and certificates awarded for flowers and gardens and one for a pumpkin. 

One was full of Christmas cards. He picked up one, thinking there was nothing worthwhile to be found inside. He flipped it open, skimmed through the talk of the meaning of the season (all about baby Jesus and God’s love) and stared blandly at the name of some Aunt that wished her well. The second one was from a niece. The third from a sister in law. He was set to drop the box to the side but the fourth one he picked up had been handled to the point of being ripped in two. He set it in the box lid to open it, expecting to find the same general well-wishes (maybe from a Mother, maybe a Father) and found that it had been filled from the top of the inside front cover to the opposite bottom corner in tiny, tiny script. 

It started: “Peg-- It should go without saying that I haven’t got many friends. I don’t pretend that it is because I am misrepresented by others. I am quite aware that I do not possess a pleasing temperament, or a charming smile. I have no thought of becoming popular by any means but the wealth that I am to inherit. Indeed, as the day draws closer that Father may die, the more silly girls seem to appear from thin air to exclaim over how we were dear friends as children. They are clever liars; I do appreciate their efforts to piece together stories like a gaudy patchwork quilt. The other day a woman told me that she and I met at a debutante ball and that we spent the whole evening laughing and dancing together. She insisted that I had been in love with a boy named James who had red hair and green eyes. I confess that I only allowed her to go on and on, so that she could develop every aspect of her lie, because it amused me. You would have been ashamed of me because while I smiled at her excited jabbering, I was laughing at her inside. I am filled with meanness, Peg.  
Despite how we have been separated these many years over our differences regarding my choice in husband, I miss your gentleness. While I cannot change my heart on the matter of my future husband, I find that more and more often I am left with too many empty hours in my day. I miss you, gentle sister, and the many days we spent together. I miss our adventures. I miss our stories. I cannot replace you; there is simply no other in the world that could take the place that you have made your own.  
I know that I am difficult, that I am full of meanness. I have abused your friendship many times. I think on it; I think I should apologize for the things that I have said and for the ugly things I have done to you. Every time I think I have found the words, I choke on them. You are so dear to me that I cannot bear to know that you would not forgive me if I asked so I do not. I am a coward.  
I am sorry, gentle sister. I miss you. -Phyllis.”

On the back of the card, in Mrs. Finch’s unfussy handwriting was the date 1947. It was before Phyllis had married Calvin (but not very long before it). Sef leaned back into his chair and reread it once, twice, maybe three times before he picked up the wand to scan the tiny handwriting. He set the card on the bedspread and picked up the next one. Most of them, almost _all_ of them were from extended relatives. 

There were twenty nine of them from Phyllis, they crossed the divide between the huge but meticulous handwriting of seven year old Phyllis saying simply, “MeRRy CHRistMass Peg.”

To Phyllis, in 1951, writing, “Peg-- I had hoped these empty halls would be filled by now. Either through your work or mine. Next year, if we are still overcome with ghosts and daydreams, we will rebel against these insults. I say, we run away to an island and we drink things that no lady of good breeding would drink. I will throw money at men and you can dip your toes in the blue water. We will be a scandal worth writing about, I think.  
Though I find no comfort in twinkling and the merriment of this wretched season, I do wish you the best. --Phyllis.”

But by 1959, it was: “Peg. I am sorry that I could not be at home this Christmas. I find the thought of the emptiness too nauseating. I do hope that you’ve taken my advice and gone to Vermont to visit your sister. We all deserve the singular comfort our family can bring. -Phyllis.”

In 1968, “Peg-- All the best to you and yours, Phyllis.” The whole of the sixties were full of simple lines of script on paper, as devoid of personality and sincerity as any line of ink could manage. The seventies dawned the same as the sixties ended. Sef flipped open six-or-seven cards that might as well been blank.

But 1978 came back to life: “Peg-- I do enjoy the pretense of a true Catholic holiday. I have not been so thoroughly entertained by spectacle in years. Almost as entertaining to me as the theater of Mass is how openly our sweet pet Maria’s new Mother and Father seem to hate her. The girl tries hard to secure their good opinion and when she has worked herself to the bone to no avail, I remind them that while their money outranks mine in terms of age, I have both the means and the fortitude to destroy them. I have resolved that if there is no good left in me, I should use my meanness for the betterment of others.  
Make sure the boy gets a decent Christmas, Peg. I’ve instructed Walters to give you whatever you need to manage it. --Phyllis.”

The boy had to have been Edward; he was the only child that was living at the house (or dog house) that early. Sef dropped the card with the others and found the next.

In 1983, Phyllis wrote: “I continue to admire your unflinching loyalty, Peg. No woman on this Earth could ask for more.” There was a turn of meanness in it that couldn’t be defined, without any clues or any context. 

But in 1992, on a card printed with his Dad’s fat, smiling face peering out from the front. He was wearing a blue tie and a green vest with a striped shirt (the combination looked hideous) as he leaned on his elbow in front of a background of palm trees and glistening water. In one of his fists he was clutching a fat candy cane. Phyllis wrote, “look at how handsome our young son is, Peg. He insisted that we make this card for you; he chose his own tie and vest to wear and he insisted the tropical background would be the only true fit for a holiday card. There is no other member of our family that has earned the right to this card--it is truly one of a kind. He insisted that as you are more dear to him, and to me, that you deserve better. To be so young, to be so full of hopeful things again. With all our love, Phyllis.”

The last of them was in 1997, the year before Phyllis died. It said:  
“Peg- I do understand that I no longer have the privilege of your confidence. I deserve your quiet horror. I have found divine peace in knowing that I will soon pass. I do regret that I could not be there for what must certainly be my final Christmas on this earth. I remember you were so fond of the holiday when we were children; I remember the smell of all your Mother’s pies laying out on the long side board. But I am selfish; I took this final year to steal these moments with my precious boy, this child that I have stolen from his rightful parents. I find joy in his delight as we danced to the Christmas carols out in the snow. I lie to myself that I can fill him with enough happiness to see him through; I tell myself that if I wrap him tightly enough in blankets and whisper long enough stories into his perfect little ear he will never forget how there was a time when no Mother ever loved her son more.  
I am so tired, Peg. I crave the relief that death promises me. Still, this happy season has filled me with dread for what will happen to my precious child once I am gone. The ghosts of the things that I have done will not be quiet once I’ve gone; my closets are overcome with skeletons and he will inherit them all.  
It is no less than I deserve to know that one day, my boy will think of me with revulsion. I have become revolting. Yet, at the same time, I pray he does think of me as one thinks of a boogeyman. I hope he reviles me as the monster I am; I hope that I have given him the strength to become a man and that I have not poured my poison in.  
I do miss you, old sister. I’ve made amendments to my will; my house is yours as long as you’d like it. --Phyllis.”

Sef didn’t scan the card but lay it out on the bed. The nap had done nothing to ease the bruised feeling that seemed to encompass his whole body; the almost giddy relief of seeing his parents teasing one another was not holding back the gathering, dark confusion. There were a thousand things to think of Phyllis and no denying the bald, ugly facts. Still, there was this. Like a dying wish, crushed in a paper box of other dead voices. Sef leaned back in the chair and turned his head to shout, “Father!”

It took him a minute but Father came sneezing into the room. He was adjusting the mask that had been knocked askew as he mumbled, “yes?” through a suddenly congested throat. 

“I think I found your evidence,” Sef said. He had laid all the cards out from the baby that Phyllis had been to the woman she was when she knew she was dying. He got up to let his Father have the chair and watched how he poured over the cards without touching them. Father’s face was impassive (always) when he read. It had driven them crazy as children, when each of them had gone out of their way to develop wilder and wilder stories and essays to make Father’s perfect mask break. It had been a game once: Father aware of their attempts and all the children doing their best to earn the bragging rights. It had been Tazim, at last, with a paper entitled: The History of Farts that had been an endless litany of shit puns situated perfectly in between dizzyingly perfect historical facts. Father had laughed until he cried.

But here, Father sat back in the chair and sighed behind the mask. “She loved him. No matter what else you feel you have to say about her, she really did love him.”

“I didn’t think she could,” Sef whispered.

Father looked up at him, with the mask covering his face there was no telling how his lips had moved but it seemed like he might have been smiling. Patiently smiling up at him. “Love does not always bring out what’s best in us. Have you finished scanning them all?”

“Most of them,” Sef said. “Should I show Dad?”

There they paused, the two of them thinking through what was best. In the end, Father said, “I feel that when we made the choice to come into this room we obligated ourselves to show him anything we found about Phyllis. And to support him no matter how he feels about it.” That last bit was clipped with reproach. 

The silence dragged and dragged, Sef handed Father the scanner to scan the last letter and he checked over the documents on the tablet to make sure they were legible. He almost wanted to find that they couldn’t be scanned, that meant they could never leave this dusty room, but they showed up in perfect clarity on the screen. 

“Would you like me to show him?” Father asked. 

Sef wasn’t sure how to say, _I don’t want to be the one that does_ , but also, _but I need to know that he’s okay_. He just shrugged. “Maybe we should just give him the tablet and let him decide who he wants to be there.” 

Father was agreeable to that, and they packed away their excavations for the day. 

\--

Sef wasn’t hiding; he had taken a moment to catch his breath. Just a moment to sit outside on the doghouse porch, away from the spectacle of his Dad making dinner at the old stove while Father and him argued playfully over the arbitrary nature of antiques. They made mended what had felt insurmountable only three days ago; their relief and their joy was buoyant and it filled up every edge of the room they were in until it was a wonder the whole house didn’t lift off the foundation. 

Every part of him wanted to feel that elation; but there had been _too much_ in too _little_ time. He found himself sitting on the old porch swing, wondering how any of it had come to this. He tried to steer his thoughts to Phyllis (where he thought they needed to be) and how she had turned slowly to stone all inside living flesh. But he thought of his Dad instead. Who existed in constant contradiction: as the clown of Sef’s childhood, the master of fun, the Dad they all wanted to call when they were in trouble, the one that never spoke angrily or expressed disappointment. There had never been a moment when Sef had felt it was only a mask; that there was some other man living beneath it. 

Of course, he would never have believed any man who thought his Father was capable of the level of self-loathing he’d described. Father was calmly confident at every turn; always striving and pushing to be better than he was only the day before. 

Sef called Jaida (almost four years too late). She answered on the fourth ring, sounding as if she were interrupted when she greeted him. He pushed his toes against the railing and watched the sky go dark all around him; he thought he was going to say (I finished the sweater and the booties and the hat so you have a complete set or three) but he said, “did you know Father hated himself?”

Jaida was cautious when she said, “I wouldn’t have phrased it that way but I had a general awareness that he struggled with his sexuality when he was young.”

“ _Hated_ himself,” Sef repeated. “Like, contemplated suicide, starved himself, deprived himself of friends and social interactions, tried to prove that he was worth being alive by excelling at academics--completely and totally hated himself.”

“Wow,” Jaida whispered. “I mean, we talked about struggling to accept things about yourself that you may not like and he alluded to--wow,” she repeated.

Sef sighed. “Dad put me in a chokehold yesterday.”

“Christ,” Jaida said.

“How did you know about him?” Because that was the sticking bit, the part that Sef didn’t understand. How had he gotten so far in his life and seen nothing of his parents. The revelation that his Grandfather had been killed had thrown his life into a spin because he couldn’t imagine his Dad being capable of accepting anything like it. But now, his head was filled up with ideas of half-said things and half-regurgitated memories. (Of Mr. March, who hated three little boys that never obeyed him. Mr. March had gone away when Father sent him and he had never come back. Sef didn’t care much back then about grown-ups that went missing; but it stuck out like a sore spot in his recently abused memory.)

There a lag, a dragging silence, before Jaida said (like she never wanted to admit it): “Father said I have above average deductive and inductive reasoning skills. The things that you can’t figure out astound me. You’re so smart; you’re profoundly intelligent, Sef. If Father hadn’t been so against having you tested as a child you probably would have been a qualified genius and you’re so stupid. You have no idea how intelligent you are, how much you can take in and remember and process. Remember those schematics that you drew for the robot hand?”

“It was a prosthetic,” he corrected.

“Dad took you to a lab for like three hours, you came back with a degree in engineering, Sef. How did you do _that_ so quickly and so easily and you never figured out that Dad always disappeared _for business_ when Father was angry? Look at the cousins! Look at the entire family, Sef. Even Desmond gets angry and Dad _never_ did. But every single time something happened to any of us, it was always Malik that was there wasn’t it? It was always Malik first. Dad couldn’t handle it, Sef. Or he _was_ handling it, depending on the event.”

“I thought Dad left because of Father,” Sef said, “I thought they were fighting. I don’t know.”

Jaida was laughing in disbelief, all hot and bubbling. “Of course you did,” she sighed, “at least that explains why you think Father is the devil.” Her amusement wasn’t mean but honest, and she said, “are you okay?”

“I feel like I fell through the looking glass,” Sef said. “I’m upside down; nothing makes sense anymore.”

He could _feel_ Jaida shrugging even if he couldn’t see it. “You’ll make it make sense, Sef. You always figure out how the pieces go together. If you can’t make sense of Dad, or Father, or how these new things about them fit in: figure out Phyllis. She’s been your excuse this whole time.”

“Yeah,” wasn’t a very solid agreement. “I got to go in.”

“Take care of them, Sef. Take care of yourself.”

\--

Sef did not, despite what he told Jaida, go inside. He stayed out on the porch until the fireflies were dancing in the grass and tried to stack things back into place in his head. He hadn’t intended to be outside as long as he had been, so he hadn’t bothered to bring anything to do. He’d coasted by to the sounds of his parents until they were eating and then the scrape of the dishes was its own kind of music through the open door. 

He heard his Dad walking toward him before the screen door opened. “Can I sit?” Altair asked. When Sef nodded, he sat next to him without touching. He had the tablet with him but he just left it sitting in his lap as if it didn’t matter. They were quiet together, filling up the silence with prickly, uncertain things. 

“Were you always this way?” Sef asked.

“Which way?”

It seemed like a trap to make him say it. Sef shifted so he could look at his Dad, looking calmly out at the fireflies. “Jaida said you were a psychopath,” was the quietest he’d ever said anything. As if he could whisper it into oblivion. 

Dad’s whole face flinched at that but it didn’t seem to matter. He looked at Sef, like he always had, like nothing at all had ever changed. “I do not know if I would qualify to be a psychopath. I declined many opportunities to seek a professional opinion on the matter. I haven’t changed very much since yesterday, Sef. Everything you remember about me is still true.”

It was and that was the strangest part. It felt like he was seeing two realities existing one over the other. Maybe it had always been that way and the two versions had always been in perfect time before. 

“I was not raised in a usual way,” Altair conceded. “The woman that raised me was capable of extreme cruelty. I grew up protected by how terribly afraid people were of her. People weren’t _people_ to Phyllis. They were tools, and that was how she taught me to see them. She raised me to be ruthless because she was. She raised me to understand the value of cruelty, to be able to appreciate the importance of intimidation. She told me many, many things but the one I think about most, the one that has served me best in my life was, _if there must be war, kill all that oppose you_.”

“But you never killed anyone,” Sef said.

“No,” Altair agreed. “I met your Father.” He was smiling over fond memories while Sef was trying to convey how the two things didn’t _seem_ related (especially since Dad had tried to kill Leonardo). “Malik saved my life. When I was young, stupid and lost, and he was young and stupid and lost, we found one another and we made a fantastic mess of things. He’s exhausting because he won’t ever quit. He’s complicated and he’s irrational. He’s _stubborn_ ,” (the truest words ever spoken), “but, he’s strong where I’m not. I protect him where he’s vulnerable. Together, we’re practically indestructible.”

“What would have happened if you hadn’t met him?”

Altair shrugged. “Who can say? What would have happened if Phyllis never met Calvin? If you never found that file? If Darim hadn’t pissed Jaida off in high school?” He was grinning at that one, trying to make Sef laugh.

It was ridiculous, how long Jaida’s grudge against Darim had lasted. (Or perhaps not, in light of this new information about his parents.) “Well, in Jaida’s defense, she has never hidden anything from him. Darim just doesn’t pay attention.” That was a polite way of saying his brother was an idiot. “Did Father tell you about the cards?”

“Yes.”

“Have you read them?” Sef asked.

“No.” He lifted the tablet and let it fall again. “I haven’t made up my mind if I want to or not. I have a great many different feelings about Phyllis but no matter what else I find about her, she was still my Mother. It feels like, there’s almost no point in searching for anything new.”

“Yeah,” Sef agreed. “Father really hated himself?”

“Yes,” Dad said.

Sef sighed again. “I should go eat. Dad,” seemed important, “you did a good job. All of us idiot kids, we all grew up happy. We all love you. Whatever shit it was you grew up with--you didn’t pass it down, it’s not here anymore.”

“Thank you, son,” Dad said. “Go eat, we saved you plenty.”

\--

Sleep evaded him. (Or else, sleeping in and napping all day had made it difficult to be tired.) It was long-after-dark, long-after his parents-went-to-bed. Sef turned on the light over the table in the kitchen and started reading through the ledgers. The entries started years before Phyllis took over. 

In slanted, precise handwriting it said things like:  
“advised Ms. DeCort to retain a new business tutor.”  
“retained a private detective.”  
“Ms. Ferdinand has begun a review of company bylaws.”

The mundane tasks went on for years, meandering in and out of nothing. Walters was little more than a snotty gopher, quietly retrieving a series of bricks that didn’t appear to go anywhere. He made it through an entire ledger (and felt very much like he could sleep with ease after) without ever learning anything of significance. The second one started with an empty page, fluttery and thin, and then the next page was dimpled with handwriting. It was the same slant, the same tight-precise-letters but the rage that covered it was new. 

It said:  
“Proof has, at last, fallen into our laps. What four private detectives could not find with unlimited resources has walked up to the door of Ms. DeCort’s house and rang the bell.”  
“After some research into the particulars of young Mr. Miles’ conception, we have retained a new firm of detectives and given them a grim set of guidelines with which to begin their search.”  
“We have concluded an exhaustive review of New York’s manslaughter laws.”

It built like a staircase, rising up and up. It documented the finding of the original children, the possibility of suing Calvin for his ‘interference in the normal development of a young girl’ (those words were scratched so deeply in the paper they had left a shadow on the page after it). While Mr. Walters concentrated on destroying Calvin and providing Phyllis with education and resources (and ways to reclaim everything her marriage to Calvin might have endangered), Ms. Ferdinand appeared with increased frequency to announce she’d found another hole in the company. 

The pair of them completed a hostile takeover of not only Calvin’s entire life, but the empire that Phyllis’ father had built. Like a set of spiders building a web, they set a trap and waited for everyone to fall into it. The entire ledger was merciless; every word pooled with quiet rage. He leaned back against his seat and tried to wrap his head around it.

It was the steadily growing rage that confused him. What little he had found out about Walters was a record of his graduation from a laughable law school (one that, when Sef looked, wasn’t even still operating). He’d found a picture of the man, as skinny as a stalk of corn. He was unremarkable in every aspect, doomed to achieve nothing in his life if only he had not met Phyllis. Ferdinand hadn’t even been a lawyer at the outset, she was sent to law school on the last page of the second ledger, as Walters put it ‘to receive a scrap of paper to certify what we already know to be true’. 

It was no great leap to think they must have loved Phyllis; but it felt like a revelation that shifted the entire base of his assumptions. (Not so unlike trying to put everything his Father had ever said to him inside this new scope of understanding, editing his own memory to make sense of what had seemed obnoxious and condescending before.) Sef had started at the conclusion and searched for proof that supported it.

Phyllis was a monster: these were the reasons why. (In twenty six years, it might have been his kid, sifting through artifacts, looking for the proof that Altair was nothing but a monster.) His Father had said, _you don’t have much about her childhood_ and maybe he’d just meant there was a general lacking or maybe he’d had some idea the whole time. 

That was the thing about Malik, while Altair taught them to magnificent sand castles with delicate peaks and bridges, it was Malik that had taught them how to mix the sand to be wet enough, how to firm up the base to hold the weight of it. Malik had always dragged them from the fun of it, to show them how to start, and it had _always_ been a waste of fucking time. 

Yet, there he was, months after he started, just now wondering into the idea that there had been people who loved Phyllis. 

\--

Father woke him up with the smell of fresh-hot-coffee and the gentle sound of a mug being set carefully outside of spilling distance. He was still in his pajamas (an old shirt, a pair of flannel pants) when he sat down to squint at the tiny print in the wide-open ledgers. “Did you sleep?”

Sef stretched in the chair and grimaced at the pinch in his back. “Apparently,” he mumbled. He dragged the cup over to sip out of it and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes (succeeding in only making them feel drier). His head was a jumble of facts knocked right out of order.

Father was reading through the ledger, making little micro-expressions when he happened on something he didn’t know, flipping the pages faster than he should have been able to consume. Last week it would have grated on Sef’s last nerve, the idea that his Father had always and would always be better than him. (And the unfairness of it.) “You’re staring,” Father said.

“Watching,” Sef corrected.

That made Father look up at him with a disbelieving raised eyebrow. He abandoned the ledger to lean back into the seat and really look at him. They sat and watched one another.

“Do you remember when I designed the prosthetic hand?” Sef asked. He hadn’t been thinking about it since Jaida brought it up, but there it was tumbling out of his mouth. It wasn’t the first time he’d been angry at Malik for being dismissive but it was the one he remembered the _best_. 

“Yes,” Malik agreed. “It was very, very in-depth. Especially since you were ten at the time.” His smile was self-conscious, as if he hated to admit, “I didn’t understand a word of it. I kept the paper and I had Altair explain it to me.”

Sef didn’t mean to laugh but it erupted from his throat, half his life was built on the principle that Malik had simply never been impressed by him; that his Father had constructed a constantly shifting set of goals that Sef was never quite capable of meeting. It had started (in earnest) in that moment when he was breathless to show off his accomplishment and Father had barely managed to say how much effort must have gone into it. Effort was not accomplishment, and every single sour thought he’d had about Malik since that moment had snowballed from the idea that six months of effort had produced no worthwhile result. (And if there was nothing Sef could do to prove himself, then he should not be concerned with trying.) “You didn’t understand it,” he said when he caught his breath, “I thought you thought it was stupid.”

 _That_ made Father look outraged. “Why?”

“Because you said, _you put a lot of effort into_ and that’s what you said when you didn’t want to say ‘that picture of a bird likes a flying dick’.” That did make Father laugh (because Tazim had drawn a great deal of flying dicks despite both Father and Dad trying their hardest to nudge him into drawing something that looked more like a bird). 

Malik shook his head, “no, it’s what I said when I didn’t understand what I was looking at but it was clear that you had worked very hard on it. Tazim’s flying dicks were very well drawn--they weren’t birds, but they were very well drawn dicks.” 

That made Sef crack up. “Wait, he did it on purpose?”

“I have no idea,” Malik admitted. But it was funny to him. “Who knows with him?” He hiccuped a leftover laugh, “I still have that damn fart essay.” He was pink with grinning when he sipped his coffee again. The air between them wasn’t stagnant anymore. 

Sef was working around to thinking through things he didn’t want to think when he said, “did you really think Dad could have done something to me?”

The smile didn’t immediately slide off Malik’s face but it was held up by stilts. He hummed in his throat and flipped the ledger closed so he could run his finger down the worn-through-spine of it. “Yes,” was too honest. “It’s been harder for him, now that you’re adults. I don’t think, I _never_ thought he could do any real damage to any of you. I didn’t expect a choke hold but considering his past acts of violence, even that shows a great deal of restraint.”

“Restraint?” Sef repeated.

“He did almost beat at least one man to death with his bare hands,” Malik said gently, but moved on before the thought could turn sour. “I thought it was possible that he might have expressed his anger in a way that would be shocking to you, or your brothers and sister. I can’t imagine what it has to be like to not trust yourself in that way. It must be exhausting.”

It must have been. Sef sighed. He thought about coffee and his childhood, and Malik with his quiet disapproval, greeting them every time they did something stupid. He thought of his Dad’s last minute trips, or his late afternoons at the office that delayed them. He thought of Malik, biting his tongue when he was angry, saying with the sort of patience that no stupid seven year old boy could appreciate, _I need a minute_. “Why did you--why did you let him make you the bad guy all the time? Every time. I can’t even think of a time Dad did any discipline?”

“Because Altair’s been trying to escape his Grandmother’s legacy since he was a child. It didn’t seem like much of a compromise. He was there, behind the scenes. When you needed a parent to be upset with you, I was there. When you needed a dad that would burn the world to the ground for you, he took care of it.” Malik made it seem so simple; as if such a trade-off was easy. 

“Did Dad ever burn down the world?”

Malik almost laughed at that, like he couldn’t begin to list the ways. “A few times,” he said agreeably.

“Mr. March?” Sef asked. 

Father nodded. “Remember that it’s very easy to look at something from the outside and judge it without having to take into account the variables that made the choice. Your Dad and I made these choices about how we would raise you because it was in our mutual best interest and it was in your best interest. Nothing was forced on either of us. Things weren’t always easy. Things weren’t always perfect. But we were--we _are_ very happy with our children, with each other, with the job we’ve done.”

Well, that was something. Sef looked down at the new notes he’d made before he passed out and then slid the tablet toward his Father. “Could you look at these while I make breakfast? I know you haven’t read the ledgers but, maybe you can give me an idea if the outline’s a bit better balanced.”

Father smiled, “I would love to,” seemed like the most genuine thing he’d ever said. 

\--

Maybe he had, and maybe he hadn’t, entirely decided to go and apologize to Anson for his ridiculous behavior. Maybe it had only been that he couldn’t stand watching his parents fall so easily back into adoring one another. (Not now more than ever, when he knew better what lengths they would go for the other.) 

It was late July, not so long before the staff at the old house would shift its focus from summer weddings to nostalgic fall holidays. Christmas was a big event at the old house, full of trees and shimmery ornaments. The grand old mansion had a certain sort of feeling in the snow; a great behemoth buried by nature with only the soft golden glow of candles in the windows to warm it. Right now, the gardens were thick with bugs going about the busy business of investigating flowers. 

Sef walked the whole of the gardens (thinking unkind thoughts about how unnecessary large and elaborate the flowers were) before doubled back to the groundskeeper’s building. It had been renovated when he was a child, to provide a decent space of the men that did all the work of maintaining the yards. Father had been the one that insisted but Dad had been the one that filled it with every sort of creature comfort a body could ask for. (It even had a room with bunkbeds, in case anyone needed a nap). He knocked when he could have invited himself in. 

Anson was buttoning up his shirt when he pulled the door open, having the distinct look of trying to be presentable with minimal warning, but he stopped as soon as he saw Sef and let his hands fall away from his half-done-up shirt. “Oh,” he said. 

The sheer force of cool air coming from the interior of the groundskeeper’s building was enough to make a strong man break. The smoggy, thick heat of the gardens had left him coated from head to toe in sweat. (Which probably made him as attractive as a soggy mop.) “Could I come in?” he asked.

“Yeah,” was the answer. Anson stepped to the side and let him in. They were awkward in the room with the couches and the old TV mounted to the wall. The door to the manager’s office was open but there didn’t appear to be anyone in it (for all he knew, Anson might have been the manager). “Was there something I could assist you with, Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad.” He got points for the perfect pronunciation of Sef’s name. There weren’t a lot of folks that bothered (except the ones that sat opposite his Dad on a bad day). 

“I came to say that I was sorry.”

“I wouldn’t say that was necessary,” Anson said and he almost forgot to add, “Mr. Ibn--”

Sef frowned at him, “if you’re going to go through the trouble to be formal with me, I’m a doctor. It’s Dr. Ibn-La’Ahad.”

Anson narrowed his eyes at him. He’d misbuttoned the shirt so it was pulled at an angle across his chest. It gaped open over his belly (giving just a peek of his abs). Sef got distracted trying to look repentant _and_ trying to work out if one of his parents had picked out this particular uniform. He couldn’t say how functional it was but it made a man look damn good. “You don’t owe me an apology,” Anson said.

“I was behaving recklessly,” Sef said.

Anson crossed his arms over his chest. That made his biceps look delightful. There was something to be said about how his lower arms and his belly were all the same color which meant he must have been stripping his shirt off more often than he admitted. (And why not, if one could look just as good without it.) “Who hasn’t behaved recklessly? At least you were doing it at your own house. Could have been worse.”

Sef laughed at that, “this isn’t my house.”

“You keep saying that,” Anson returned. He shifted his feet in a way that was _definitely_ purposeful because it made his hips jut a bit forward and what with his gaping shirt and his lovely tanned belly there was zero chance he wasn’t aware of how inviting the whole look was. He was smiling too, grinning right at Sef’s face.

“It’s true,” was the most carefully he’d ever said words in all his life. “If this were my house then any employees that worked here would be my employees.”

“Oh,” Anson said. “I could see how that might create a legal tangle--imagine what would happen if it got out how you, for instance, groped the landscaper in the gardens.”

“Precisely.” It felt a bit like magnetism, that thing that dragged him forward. He’d had more than enough casual, almost anonymous sex in his life. (And, if it weren’t arrogant to say, he was pretty damn good at it too.) Animal attraction was one of his most favorite because it was deliciously uncomplicated. This man looked-good, and smelled-good, and it stood to reason that he’d feel-good too if only Sef could get his hands on him. “But it could get more complicated.”

“Could it?” Anson said. His arms unfolded from around his chest as he moved to match how Sef was crowding up against him. The slight height was very-nearly-perfect. (He thought, if he kissed Anson, it might have been very difficult to stop.) The man’s hands were warm through his sweat-damp-shirt, cupped around his waist. His smile was going flat because they were busy licking their lips and thinking up the dirty things they’d do to one another. “How much more complicated?”

“Lots,” wasn’t his most intelligent attempt at flirting but it had been months since he’d gotten laid and even longer than he’d put anymore effort into it than showing up and looking available. Either Anson was disappointed in his wit or he was tired of waiting because it was his hand on Sef’s neck pulling him into the kiss. It was no shy brush of lips, not gentle-first-touch. No, Anson kissed him bold-and-brash, pulling their bodies together as close as he could get them as his tongue slid into Sef’s mouth.

It was _good_ , oh so _deliciously_ good. Sef wrapped his arms around the man, twisted them around, step-step-ing toward where he thought the sofa was. That was good too because nothing else seemed nearly as important as getting naked with this man. Anson’s hands were under his shirt and Sef’s fists were twisting the back of the sort-of-buttoned work shirt until he felt it pop loose. Anson groaned and Sef’s legs hit the couch. 

“Just to be clear,” Sef said when he tipped his head back and yanked his shirt over his head, “I’m not your employer.”

Anson shoved him back so he was sitting on the couch watching the man shake the shirt off his arms. His face was twisted up with amusement as he straddled Sef’s lap. “You’re fucking adorable,” he said before he kissed Sef again. “If either of us should worry about something, it’s probably me worrying about what your Dad is going to think of the things I’m going to do to you.”

Oh-and-that-was _something_.

\--

Father took almost a full day to read the ledgers; Dad spent that time meandering through the house and the gardens. He left in the morning to walk wherever he wanted to go and he came back in the evening to make dinner and check on their progress. While Father was full of suggestions and edits, Dad said nothing unless he could contribute a new or a more true fact. 

“Did he read the cards?” Sef whispered to Father (long after Altair had left) and Father had just shrugged. That could have meant no, or I don’t know, or I know but I’m not telling. Shrugs were notoriously unreliable as far as Malik was concerned. Instead of push, he just said, “when he goes home, are you going to go with him?”

Father looked up from what he was reading, “we haven’t finished looking through Mrs. Finch’s apartment.” As if that should have been _obvious_. 

“I didn’t know if--” But there was no way to phrase ‘Dad was more important than me’ without making it sound like there was some kind of competition. The way Father was staring at him seemed like he’d already worked out the unspoken part but he was willing to wait to see if he were wrong. The silence dragged long enough that Father hummed (a little victory hum, as he did). 

“We discussed it, Jaida’s baby is due in August, once the baby is born I won’t be available to help you here, at least not as much.” 

Yes, well, as long as it was all discussed. “Okay,” Sef said. “Good. I guess we should finish with Mrs. Finch’s rooms then. Since our time is limited.”

Father agreed. “We should.”

\--

Dad did not make a fuss about leaving. It was just that, one day short of a week since he arrived, he had his bag hanging off his shoulder as he stood in the kitchen looking at the timeline with the same blank expression as when he’d arrived. Sef stumbled down to the kitchen to make kitchen and found him there (alone). “Why Phyllis?” he asked (like he asked before).

“I believe in science over God.” (He was philosophical with five hours of sleep, an allergy headache from the dust in Finch’s apartment and no coffee.) “Science says this woman doesn’t matter. Her entire family line died when she died, and yet: here you are. There is no denying that regardless of her biological irrelevance you, and therefore all of us, are intrinsically linked to her.”

That made Dad shake his head. “You share none of Malik’s DNA and all of his personality. Sometimes there are just things that genetics can’t explain,” but also, “Kadar might not like you disregarding psychology as a science. He’s been arguing with his brother about nature versus nurture since Jaida was a baby.”

Sef snorted at that. “Psychology is a different sort of science than the ones I prefer.”

“I know,” Dad said (with some amusement), “but take an early lesson that took your Father half his life to learn, Sef. There are _never_ absolute answers. If you keep searching for _proof_ of an idea, you’ll never be happy. It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to guess.”

There were many flaws with that logic (and his Dad the Certified Genius, should have known that). “Was it hard to be away from us?”

Altair tipped his head back as his stare got long and empty. He drew a breath in through his nose and let it out again, his shoulders moved in a shrug. “Yes,” didn’t seem to follow the motion. “It was hard to be away from you. I don’t think there were many times when I was angry at any of you kids. There were times when issues came up around you, that required intervention. I found it very difficult to keep my distance when I was angry at people that had hurt or upset you. It was hard to make Malik shoulder all that; it was hard to watch all of you children grow up thinking he was something he wasn’t.” 

“Do you think it was like that for her, with you?”

That made Altair smile, sad and unsurprised, “not exactly the same. I did not have the same misconception of Phyllis that you and your brothers have of me. I was more like Jaida, I knew that there was something happening and I had some idea of what it was.”

Sef nodded and Altair nodded back. They were awkward in the same room. 

Dad said, “son,” as if he were going to just not mention it, “I appreciate you clarifying that you aren’t Anson’s employer before you had sex with him but that building has cameras in it.”

“Fuck,” Sef gasped.

“I heard that is what you did,” Dad said (somewhat more light hearted), “I’d support your choices if you wanted to start a career in porn but perhaps not while one of the participants is on the clock of a different job.”

Sef laughed (at the absurdity). “Is he in trouble?”

“Not this time,” Dad said, instead of saying _he should have because his behavior was unprofessional_. He came close enough to pull Sef into a hug and said, “I don’t understand why you have to do this, but do your best, son.” 

\--

Life fell into an easy pattern. They went to search through Mrs. Finch’s apartment, unearthing nothing more significant than a scrapbook or a photo collage that had been missed before. Father dusted all her shelves and swept the floors. He wiped down the counters and straightened the crooked pictures on the walls. Sef skimmed through the books that were the most well worn, thinking there might have been a spare letter or a slip of paper tucked into the pages. 

He found pressed flowers in some; mostly he found nothing but well-loved books.

Over lunch, they argued the significance of events. They argued bias. 

After lunch, Father went to read, or write, or call his other children. Sometimes he walked in the gardens and sometimes he took a nap. Sef sat in the kitchen and worked on new drafts of the same chapters. 

At dinner, they talked about the past, reviewing their individual aggravations without malice. When they were done, Sef took his turn to call his brothers, or sister, or just to read up on what he’d been missing in medicine. He busied himself for a few days looking at positions that fit his qualifications. For a few days he looked at schools where he could learn more. While he worked on getting himself ready to sleep, Father was busy leaving notes on his rough drafts, challenging his conclusions and his sentence structure so they could begin again the next morning.

A week and a half of settling into the same schedule, Sef asked, “how’s Dad?” when he wanted to ask (again) if Dad had ever read the letter. He was stuck in a rut, trying to reason out if Phyllis’ Father and Mother had ever loved her, if that had mattered. It was an impossible puzzle to solve, and almost irrelevant when set up against Calvin’s interference. It was just that Phyllis must have wanted a family for a reason. She must have been starving for people to love and challenge her (not so unlike Dad) for a _reason_. 

“He’s doing well,” Father answered. “Darim is spending a few days shadowing him to get a better idea of his future. And Altair is amusing himself by thinking up what aspects of the job Darim would hate the most so he can concentrate on them the hardest.”

“So they’re reviewing the company’s financials?” Sef guessed.

Father snorted, “among other things.” He looked up from the chapter that he was reviewing. “I’ve agreed not to get involved because the only reason your brother doesn’t know that he isn’t needed to take over his Dad’s position is because, despite our many attempts to make him understand it, he does not view Jaida as an equal.”

That was almost unfair. “Well, Jaida’s not his equal. He doesn’t come close to matching her. He knows that; but I don’t think he thinks she can’t do this job because she’s a girl, or because she’s inferior.”

Father leaned back into his chair. “Then how could he possibly not know?”

“He doesn’t think very hard about things. Part of this is on her; she’s been not telling him things ever since he ruined that party she went to in high school. I mean, Jaida’s exhausting; there’s no point in trying to keep up with her. Darim doesn’t put enough effort into anything to put in the effort to understand her, or what she’s doing. But it’s not because she’s a girl, it’s because he just doesn’t try.”

Father didn’t look entirely convinced. “That’s not a significant improvement,” he said. “But, I agreed to let them have their fun torturing your brother as long as she tells him that he doesn’t have to take over the family business by Christmas.”

“That’ll be the best present he ever got,” Sef said.  
\--

Around the curves of the garden, Sef found Anson (shirtless) plucking weeds out of the flower beds. There was a small pile of litter stacked up just behind his feet and he was muttering to himself about _god damn tourists_.

“When’s your lunch break?” Sef asked.

“Eleven.” Anson was dusting his hands down his thighs, trying not to look too obvious about looking Sef over (and Sef, on the other hand, kept up no such pretenses). “I thought your Father was staying with you.

“He has errands to run.” Sef shrugged like that hardly mattered. “I can’t promise there will be any lunch if you come by the dog house.” But there were a variety of other things he could promise. From the way Anson smiled at him, he either guessed or made up a few of his own.

“I guess it’ll depend on how hungry I am when I’m finished with this,” was the answer (as if they didn’t both know that Anson would be there). But they were amused with themselves and this stupid game they were playing. 

Sef went back to the house to pretend to do anything at all but wait for the knock on the door. He managed to choose a book to read and ended up watching videos on his phone until eleven-oh-five when Anson showed up on his doorstep. He smelled like mulch and fresh-green leaves, his hands were rough as sandpaper when they touched him. They had proper, fully naked sex in the room Sef had taken for his own with the door wide open and no cameras (so far as he knew) to record them. 

After, Anson laid on his back, smiling at the ceiling. Sef laid on his belly so he could appreciate the many things there was to appreciate about the man’s body. “How long is your break?” he asked.

“An hour,” Anson said. He ran his fingers through Sef’s hair, fluffing it up so it must have looked like a sloppy bird nest (and it might anyway). “What’s the story with this house?” 

“Well,” Sef lifted himself and slid a leg across Anson’s thighs. He busied himself with letting his fingers explore all the perfect dips and curves of the man’s body. “My Great Grandfather lived here,” was the simplest version of the truth. 

“So that’s why it’s called the doghouse?”

Sef leaned forward, rested his weight on his elbows and smiled at Anson’s raised eyebrow. “He wasn’t a good person,” was enough explanation. “That was pretty good sex.”

“Yeah,” was the agreement of voice and breath and hands that slid down Sef’s back to cup at his ass. There was nothing possessive in the agreement, or the touch, but a perfectly genial appreciation. “This is just sex, right?”

“Yes,” Sef said. 

Anson flipped them over, “good.” They fell back into kissing, unhurried but still intent, tricking themselves into believing an hour was as good as eternity. 

\--

The old estate had a way of warping reality. There was no sense of time in the massive sprawl of the yards, no concept of the modern world in Phyllis’ mansion. The dark-stained wood was timeless as fresh-fallen-snow. The whole house seemed to envelope all that entered through the front doors, that awe you felt standing before the lavish magnificence of the double stairs soaked into your pores like hot water and it filled you up with a sense of being somewhat larger than you were.

Sef was filled to bursting with the idea that this hiatus from the real world would never have to end. The sneaky little thought that he could continue to play at accomplishing something without a single worry for the world beyond was as comforting as the dulling sensation of liquor. Not even Father, inherently practical, could impose a sense of reality on him.

No, Sef was wrapped up entirely in the shell of carelessly enjoying himself. He made a quick habit out of fucking Anson every time he could. (Most notably, out in the flowers before Anson’s shift started, with nothing under his back but grass and dirt and no guarantee they wouldn’t be discovered.) 

It was his brothers that shattered the illusion. They might have been banging on the front door of the doghouse or they might have just walked to the door, but either way they were on the front porch when Sef was walking Anson out. There was the two of them: Darim with his thick football shoulders and his Dad’s mean stare and Tazim, quietly unassuming with a serial killer’s hyper focused stare. 

“Fucking the help?” Darim asked loud enough there was no mistaking Anson must have heard him. 

Tazim turned his head to watch the man walk away, “Don’t be a dick,” he said. But when he looked back he added, “of course he was fucking the help. I’m mostly straight and I’d fuck that guy. He’s got a nice ass.” 

While Darim was sputtering an objection, Tazim invited himself inside without so much as an ‘excuse me’ as he squeezed himself around Sef standing in the doorway. “I missed you so much,” Sef said. He pushed the door shut when Darim was inside and considered fixing his shirt but decided he didn’t need to bother. “What are you doing here?”

Tazim was already in the kitchen, looking at the piles of paper and the timeline stuck to the wall. He said, “you shouldn’t put thumbtacks directly into the wall,” like he had ever bothered to care about that once in his whole life. 

Darim walked slower, arriving in the kitchen like a sheriff in a western, all sprawled legs and implied authority. (He’d always had that, the _implied_ but not actual authority, just for the luck of being the first one of them the surgeons grabbed when they performed the c-section on their Mom.) “We’ve come to make you come home,” he said.

“A phone call would have worked too,” Sef said.

Tazim laughed at that. “You disappeared for three years, you have no credibility.” The words were jagged as rocks, barely softened by Tazim’s sense of humor about these sorts of things. He looked away from the timeline, “so where’d you send Father while you got dicked by the gardener?”

There were a dozen things he wanted to object to in that sentence alone, but Darim interrupted with a snicker. “Did he _plow_ your _back fields_?” 

“Yes,” Sef said. “I have been thoroughly plowed but not seeded.”

The thing was, Darim talked like he was hot shit but he was so easy to horrify that there was almost no sense in victory at his outraged face. He might have sputtered up to some kind of objection (about oversharing one’s sex life, like they didn’t all have to listen to Darim _entertaining_ half the graduating class in his bedroom senior year) if not for Tazim.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to observe proper hoe safety. You never know where his tools have been and quite frankly, there’s no telling what kind of stuff could be buried in your fields,” Tazim said. He came over to sling his arm over Sef’s shoulder so they could both look at Darim’s growing blush. (How they ended up with a prudish brother who was also, possibly, the most sexually active of all of them was still a mystery.) “You did fuck that guy in the ass though, right? Because that looked like an amazing ass.”

“I did,” Sef agreed and also, “it was.”

“Good blowjobs?”

“Average.”

Tazim made a soft noise at that, like agreeing that it was just the law of balances that you couldn’t have a great ass and great blow jobs in the same partner. “Well, call Father and tell him that the plowing is through. Jaida only gave us two days to get here and back. I’m sure it’ll take you at least ten hours to pack.”

“ _She_ couldn’t have called?” Sef asked. He hadn’t finished fixing things with his brothers but he felt like he’d mended most of the hurt between him and his sister. (Or maybe, she had always been the easiest one to talk to.) He pulled his phone out while he protested to send a text to Father that they had been invaded. 

“She wanted us to give you these,” Darim said (rather than address any of the gay sex talk he’d just been forced to endure) before he pulled a crumpled set of papers out of his pocket. They were summaries of Jaida’s most recent doctor’s visits (all the ones he hadn’t been at). “And you’re supposed to use the log in and the password to access her full chart so you can be fully prepared to be useful when she goes into labor.”

Things like this were the exact reason that he had never once intended to tell his family he was an actual licensed physician. (Well, not any of them except Jaida, maybe.) Sef sighed. “I’ll go start packing. Don’t touch anything down here.” 

Even as he left them in the kitchen he knew there was no chance at all that they’d leave things alone. 

\--

Father had made it back before Sef finished packing (at least partially because he was taking longer than he needed to, dragging his feet about collecting his socks). Darim and him were in the kitchen discussing how to use all the leftovers in the fridge all at once to make what his idiot brother referred to as a “super meal” so they wouldn’t have to throw away perfect good food. That was a conversation that Sef was happy enough to miss out on (and from the sound of Father trying not to be horrified, possibly Malik would have liked to miss out on it too). Outside on the front porch, Tazim was slouching in the porch swing, pushing it into a gentle sway with one foot against the railing while he read. He was rubbing his fingers against his lip in that way that meant he was really-really concentrating so Sef sat on the swing next to him and said nothing. 

Tazim was like Father (no wonder, since he was his son), he gave away nothing. Whatever his impression of Sef’s work, it didn’t show on his face while he read. When he finished the chapter he was on, he dropped the tablet to let it rest against his lap. They were quiet together, rocking on the old creaking swing and looking out at the sunny green grass. “When you’re finished with this, are you going to come back?” his brother asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Can I meet your wife then?”

Tazim snorted and turned to look at him. “You’ll probably meet her when Jaida has her baby. She’s not too happy that I haven’t introduced you yet. I tried to tell her that you were an asshole, but she seems to think that discovering a secret family murder would make anyone behave _irrationally_.” He shrugged and then lifted up the tablet again, shook it in the air like emphasizing what he meant to say next, “this woman raised our Dad?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get you,” didn’t follow the first question. “I never cared about the dead ones. There are enough living people in our family to care about. We have a Grandmother that loves us, parents that love us. None of this ever mattered to me.” (But.) “This woman, Phyllis, she’s a lot like our Dad, isn’t she? Just, in reverse? He could have been terrible but he met a man that helped him be better. She could have been amazing and she met a man that made her terrible?”

That was a drastic oversimplification of events. “More or less, yes.”

Tazim nodded along with him. “It’s good,” he said. “It’s very fair.” (But.) “Maybe you should write the one you actually care about next? I mean, this is a good warm up, but it feels like it’s just a prologue.”

Sef laughed at that. “A prologue to what?”

“The story that matters,” Tazim said. He wasn’t well-known for wisdom because he always seemed to be thinking things through without arriving at any conclusion (at least not ones he shared). But now and again, he said things like, “the one about our parents.” 

“Maybe,” Sef agreed. “I’m sorry I disappeared, that I wasn’t there at your wedding.”

Tazim threw an arm around his shoulders, full of forgiveness and spite, as he smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it. We always knew you were the dumb one.” 

\--

Since he was being dragged back to the city, Sef went to find Anson before the start of his shift. He ended up sitting on the steps of the office building, turning over what he might have wanted to say, while he waited for the man to show. 

“You’re early,” Anson said instead of _good morning_. He was carrying his lunch bag in one fist while he tucked his phone into the pocket of his uniform pants and closed his hand around his jingling keys. His shirt was thrown over his shoulder. His hair had a distinct look as if it had just been washed that made it glisten. “I feel special.”

“I came to say good bye,” Sef said. 

“I guessed.”

They weren’t romantic so there was almost no reason to feel disappointed. But it had been fun, and it had been _good_ with no strings and no dark shadows. Sef got up to his feet, “and thank you, I guess.”

That made Anson laugh, but not meanly. “You’re welcome,” he said. They were familiar with each other, comfortable to be close enough to touch, and it was easy to kiss Anson one last time. To say all those other things he couldn’t figure out how to put into words, things like:

I was lost when I got here. I’ve been stuck in the dark. I couldn’t find the way out. You didn’t fix me but you made me laugh. You gave me something _good_ to think of, to look forward to, to _remember_. 

\--

The drive from the old house to their childhood home was _hours_. Sef pulled up Jaida’s chart once they were settled into the drive and it gave him something to concentrate on rather than listen to Darim’s running commentary on university life (since he was all set to start any day now) and shadowing Altair at work. Father was in the passenger seat in the front, placidly playing along with Darim’s complaints.

Tazim was sleeping with his head pillowed on a rolled up shirt pressed to the window. 

Sef read over every note on his sister’s pregnancy, caught between the feeling of knowing too much and complete clinical detachment.

\--

They got home just before dinner, expecting an empty house, and found Jaida and Dad in the kitchen finishing up enough food to feed a small army. She was round as a watermelon, caught between glowing and over-stretched but she dragged him into a hug with both her arms squeezing his shoulders and her lips pressed against his cheek. “Good job, Sef,” she whispered where nobody else would hear. 

Tazim moved to set the table without being asked while Darim raided the fridge to find drinks. Father met Dad at the stove with a smile. Altair slid his arm around Malik’s shoulder when he kissed him.

“No problem,” he said to Jaida and she pinched his side. 

“Put the food on the table,” she said. Then she grabbed the salt and pepper off their little tray on the counter before she went to sit. Father came to sit by her, to ask her how she felt and when she was due. Dad carried the pan out of the oven and set it the center of the table. His brothers finished with the cups and plates and drinks and forks. 

“Come on,” Dad said. “Dinner time.”

(And this, after all, after _every_ thing, felt like coming home.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there may or may not be an epilogue


End file.
